2018 HITLIST - THE TOE

THE TOE by Mallory Westfall

On the night of her 30th birthday, Elizabeth accidentally comes into possession of a very special item…a severed toe. She soon finds herself obsessing over the toe’s owner and, desperate to shake up her own mundane life, must decide whether or not to give in to the darker impulses the toe has stirred within her.

GENRE

Comedy | Thriller

REPRESENTATION

UTA | Anna Berthold, Alyssa Lanz, Charles Ferraro, Grace Royer, Jed Baker Aaron Kogan Management | Aaron Kogan

STATUS

Aaron Kogan producing.

I've read this screenplay twice. There is a lot to be learned from this script. It does so much right, and yet at the same time, it could do so much better. Let's take a look and see what it does right and how it could improve. 

First... the story... 

The Toe centers around 29-year-old Elizabeth. She lives in a town that isn't specifically mentioned. It's big enough for her to live an anonymous life in, but not so big it's actually an interesting place to live. 

Elizabeth lives a hum-drum existence. She works the 9-5 in an office where nothing much happens. It's boring as hell. It's so dull that she lies about her life to her colleagues to try and seem like she leads a much more interesting life than she really does. 

The monotony of her existence is broken one evening when she drives behind a truck down a bumpy road. The back door of that truck opens and inside Elizabeth sees a dozen people, men and women, all trussed up with bags over their heads, watched over by a menacing man. They look to have been kidnapped. One of the trussed women gets her foot caught in the truck door as it slams closed on the bumpy road and it severs a toe with purple nail polish on it. This toe lands on Elizabeth's windscreen. 

Elizabeth is shocked by this and in no hurry to chase down a truck of kidnapped people, presumably looked over by mean men with guns, she stops and collects the toe. 

Great setup. So far there is mystery and intrigue. I talk a lot about story engines. There are four key story engines, things that drive the story forward and keep your audience engaged. They are...

GOALS.

STAKES.

URGENCY.

and...

MYSTERY

Of all these four, the most powerful story engine is mystery. For some reason, humans are incredibly inquisitive creatures. We HATE not knowing WHY something is. We hate not knowing how something ends. Think about how many times you've started watching something, thought it was terrible, but kept watching just to find out how it finished. Never underestimate the power of mystery. 

So far this story has a great mystery element to it. After finding said toe, Elizabeth does her civic duty and reports what she saw (kidnapped people) to the police. She does, however, forget to mention the toe she found. 

Why? At first, I asked this, and the writer explains in the descriptive text that this toe means something to Elizabeth. It is something that gives her life a sense of mystery and excitement. 

Now, this is probably the first mistake, or rather should I say, this is the first instance in this script where it could improve. 

Don't rely on explaining character decisions in the descriptive text. Descriptive text should really be limited to describing what can be seen on screen. I must mention here that it is okay to write some small asides and also to describe the mental state of characters for actors to help build their performances from. But in general, what you need to do is to make sure that everything in your script can be understood by what the characters do.

The audience learns the story by watching the characters' actions. If an action doesn't seem logical and you need to explain it in the descriptive text so the reader understands, this can backfire on you. Sure, your reader understands, but will your audience?

There were several instances in this screenplay where the descriptive text overstepped its bounds. Some script doctors advise against writing anything in the descriptive text that can't be seen on the screen, and for a long time, I advocated this. But the more and more scripts I read, the more I feel that asides in the descriptive text are fine, so long as they add to the reading experience and don't detract from the viewing experience.

Back to the story...

Elizabeth feels empowered with this newfound severed toe in her life. It is her very own special secret. It is something that makes her life interesting. It separates her hum-drum existence from all the other hum-drum lives around her. She no longer feels unimportant. In a very weird kind of way, this toe gives her life meaning.

Emboldened, Elizabeth's personality starts to change. She stops caring about what her fellow office workers think about her, she stops sucking up to her boss, she gets a tattoo.

Yes, a tattoo. And not just any tattoo, this tattoo yields her first clue to the owner of the toe.

It's at this point in the story that this script could use a little improvement.

Great intriguing hook - kidnapped people, a severed toe, but now what? Mystery alone is enough to drive a story, but for a mystery to work your hero needs to ACTIVELY try to SOLVE the mystery.

A passive hero is really boring, and unfortunately, that is what Elizabeth becomes after finding this toe. I really hoped that she would dedicate all her time to finding out who this toe belonged to, but alas she doesn't try very hard at all. She does look over the local internet page of missing people, but other than this web search, she doesn't actively search for where the toe came from. She goes back to her work and we have a series of scenes that don't involve Elizabeth trying to solve the mystery of the severed toe.

Instead, we have a bunch of boring scenes that don't really have any goals.

When your hero doesn't have a goal they are actively pursuing then your story grows boring really quickly. Audiences need to know WHY they're watching. They need to know WHAT the hero is doing and WHY they're doing it.

There are two types of goals. Open-ended goals and closed-ended goals.

Closed-ended goals work best because they have a concrete objective. Your hero must do X to achieve their goal.

Here, in this part of the story, there is no real goal. Sure, Elizabeth is curious as to where the toe came from, but she's not doing anything about finding out whose toe it is.

I was hoping that perhaps she would go to a hospital and try to see if anyone presented with a severed toe. She could break into a doctor's office late at night to try and look through their records to find out about the person with the missing toe. She could get a job as a receptionist at the hospital to search their records, she could take up hacking to try and access their databases. All of these ideas give Elizabeth an ACTIVE closed-ended goal.

But instead, we just have Elizabeth go about her life with this new secret - her severed toe in a ring-box.

The story does start moving again, but it starts moving by CHANCE.

You see, the woman who lost the served toe had a tattoo of a moose on her leg. Elizabeth decides to go and get a tattoo and discovers by chance a picture of that very same moose in the tattoo shop.

This is a good moment to talk about coincidences in film. Coincidences happen in real life ALLLLLL the time. The web is filled with crazy real-life coincidences. We all have coincidences happen in our day to day lives. Coincidences are fine in real life, BUT they come across as weak writing in film. (unless you're using them as a comedic device).

Avoid coincidences in your script at all costs. It's a shame, as there is an easy fix for this coincidence in this script. The tattoo of the moose is Elizabeth's only tangible connection to the woman who lost the toe. So it would seem a logical jumping-off point for her to start her investigation. Have Elizabeth visit a dozen tattoo parlors searching for the toe. Have her search through every tattoo parlor in town, but she comes up empty-handed. Then just when she's about to give up she sees someone with a tattoo that is different from the moose but inked in the same distinct style. She asks the person where they got the tattoo done then ... fill in the blank from here.

This is a good moment to talk about two writing tips...

NEVER MAKE IT EASY FOR YOUR HERO.

This should be obvious, but I see a lot of amateur screenplays that don't put any real obstacles in the way of the hero. Take the scenario I suggested about Elizabeth searching the tattoo parlors in search of the artist who inked the image of the Moose. It would be too easy for Elizabeth to go to a bunch of stores and just happen upon the very same image and consequently the artist who can point her towards the woman with the severed toe. Always make your hero's quest difficult. The harder it is for them, the more engaged your audience will be.

DON'T WRITE THE EXPECTED.

If Elizabeth sets out to search tattoo parlors in the hope of finding the artist who inked the lady with the severed toe - and that's what happens, then your audience is going to fall to sleep. There's nothing more boring than watching a film in which the hero sets out to do something and aside from a couple of small hiccups along the way they do exactly what they set out to do.

WRITE THE UNEXPECTED.

Blindside your audience with twists that even you didn't see coming. If you can surprise yourself, your audience is guaranteed to be caught off guard. When your audience can't guess what's going to happen, that's when they really get invested in the story.

Now, it's relevant that I write these screenwriting tips at this point in this screenplay's story - as this is exactly what The Toe does.

It goes where you don't expect it too.

At first, I thought it was going to be a simple mystery about Elizabeth searching for the owner of the toe, and perhaps discovering an underground ring of human smugglers or something else equally nefarious - instead what Elizabeth discovers I did not see coming.

Now I won't ruin this story by telling any more about its plot out of respect to the writer and producers. But I will say that this story goes somewhere the majority of people wouldn't expect it to. It becomes a very insightful, intelligent and well-crafted story that explores life's grandest question - what is the meaning of life? And, how do we create meaning from our existence?

Before I finish this review let me leave you with another couple of screenwriting tips.

Before this story took its first MAJOR twist - which happens around page 40 - (I'm not counting the inciting incident which is finding the toe) this screenplay could do a few things much better.

EMPATHY

We only really like Elizabeth because we feel sorry for her. This is a form of passive empathy. Now, this kind of empathy works much better than NO empathy, but it's a distant weaker cousin to the form of ACTIVE POSITIVE empathy.

Seeing scene after scene of Elizabeth's sad and lonely life made me feel sorry for her, but it didn't really make me love her. Not enough to commit to going on a journey with her 90+ minutes.

If I were producing this screenplay, my first note to the writer would be to inject ample doses of ACTIVE POSITIVE empathy in the first 15 pages of the script. But don't leave your empathy beats to the first 15 pages. You need to have active positive empathy beats throughout your screenplay to keep your audience in love with your hero.

GOALESS SCENES

Avoid writing these at all costs. In the first 30 pages of this screenplay, several scenes don't have a scene objective.

A scene objective is a goal your hero is trying to achieve in that scene. It's essentially the reason WHY you're writing that scene. When you have a scene with no clear goal your audience will grow bored of the scene and soon start to check out.

SUMMARY

I read this script twice. The first time I wasn't engaged in the script until the first major twist on page 40, but from then on it really had me and kept me engaged until the end. 

The second time I read it I was still bored in this first 30 or so pages but I knew it was going to get much better so I was okay with sitting through the boring first act. This became an obvious piece of advice to share with you. Don't give your first-time readers any reason to check out from the story early. Keep them engaged by keeping your hero active with clearly defined goals and make sure we love them by injecting active positive empathy beats - these are situations where the hero ACTIVELY does something GOOD for another person/entity, other than themselves. We love altruistic, compassionate characters and will stick with them until the end of their journey. 

If you'd like to read The Toe for educational purposes, send me a private email.

PROOF OF CONCEPT

When you're writing and developing a feature film, a great way to convey your idea is to create a proof of concept.

A proof of concept is a short film that conveys the core idea of your feature. It doesn't have to go into detail of what your full length story will be, it only needs to get across your core premise. 

This is actually another really good exercise in understanding what your concept really is. You might think you know what your feature film is about, but often-times, when you reduce your feature to a single sentence, or try to convey it in a short film you learn something about the central premise of your story that you didn't know previously. 

Very often I hear writers complain that they don't know how to create a proof of concept, they come up with excuses such as they don't have enough money to do it or they don't know enough crew to get it done. 

A proof of concept doesn't have to be a highly polished short film. It doesn't require a full crew to shoot it. In fact, working with a skeleton crew can be freeing. It forces you to be more resourceful and creative. When you shoot a film with only a handful of people it allows for creative flexibility that working with a full crew can inhibit.

We've all got cameras in our pockets. iPhones and Android SmartPhones all have high quality cameras. The DJI range have great cameras for a very low price tag. 

Here's the biggest tip for creating a proof of concept for your feature. 

KISS

KEEP IT SHORT STUPID!

There is nothing more off-putting than a short film that overstays its welcome. 

Some of the best short films out there are less than 2 minutes long. 

While your proof of concept can be longer than 2 minutes, I'd definitely say to not make anything longer than 5 minutes. 

If your short film is longer than 5 minutes, you're not doing it right. You're over staying your welcome. 

NO LONGER THAN 5 MINUTES. 

Everyone has five minutes to spare. 

If you're taking 10 minutes to prove your concept, you don't know what your concept is. 

There's another KISS to consider when making your proof of concept.

KISS

KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID!

Most good actors don't do short films because there's no money there. It's not worth their time. This means if you're making a short film and you don't happen to have a great actor as a friend to call upon, then you'll be working with amateurs.

Amateur actors really suck at delivering lines. 

I'm not going to get into what makes a good actor - there's a whole world devoted to that. The best way to make your proof of concept not seem like an amateur piece is to remove all the dialogue. 

It's much easier to direct actors who don't have to talk. 

It also often makes for a much more interesting film. Why? Because your audience isn't stupid. They don't need dialogue to tell them what's going on. There's actually something really interesting about watching a story unfold from visuals only. 

Here is a proof of concept I shot for a feature length horror film I'm working on. 

I shot this entire film by my self. The lady is a friend who isn't an actor.

The budget was zero. It was shot on the DJI OSMO - which I already owned. Edited on my mac, and sound design was done with free sounds from freesounds.org.

The VFX elements in this PoC were done in After Effects. I had never used after effects before making this short film. I learned all I needed from youtube tutorials. 

It took one night to film, then about a week to edit/compose/colour and complete the VFX. It's not going to win any awards for VFX or any major accolade at a prestigious film festival, but that was never the goal. 

The only goal here was to convey the concept.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE PROOF OF CONCEPT ON YOUTUBE

If the link doesn't work, copy and paste this URL. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byKDtAReiOY

Now go and create your proof of concept!

2018 BLACKLIST - ONE NIGHT IN MISSISSIPPI

This screenplay came in at number 68 on the 2018 blacklist. 

It is a formidable entry... I can see why it made the list, but I can also see why it didn't make any higher on the list. 

Let's take a look to see what it does right, what it could improve and what we can learn from this screenplay.

It is written by Michele Atkins based on the novel by Craig Shrive. 

THE STORY

We start in Mississippi 1964. We meet Graden Williams. He's only 17 years old but he knows that this backwater is not where he wants to spend his life. He's walking down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. A car pulls over, filled with white men. One of whom is Earl Daniels. Only a young man at this stage of the story. 

The men quiz Graden for a time then force him into their car. The next scene is Graden's father signing for his son's mutilated body. Graden was horrifically killed by the men.

We now meet Graden's brother, Warren. This is Warren's story. He is our hero. The story is told in two timelines, jumping between 1964 and 2008. 

In 2008 we find that Warren has dedicated his life to getting justice for the death of his brother. He has doggedly tracked down every one of the men that were present that night and seen that all of them except for Earl have been put behind bars. He gave up on Earl as he believes that Earl had died. 

In this 2008 timeline we learn that Warren is succumbing to dementia, just like his mother did. Warren survives by writing everything of importance to him on post-it notes.  

Warren lives a very unassuming life. He works part time at a small grocery store. He has no career ambition above work that puts fuel in his car and food in his belly.

The inciting incident comes by way of a phone call from an unidentified woman claiming to know the whereabouts of Earl Daniels - the only person left from the night of his brother's murder that Warren hasn't hunted down and put behind bars. 

This is a shock to Warren as he was of the understanding that Earl was dead. 

Thus begins Warren's final hunt - his final journey to track down the last killer of his brother and see that justice is served. 

I'll leave the story there as I don't want to reveal too much. 

FIRST THOUGHTS

I am a massive fan of this script. There is so much that it does right, yet there is also so much that it could improve upon. 

Let's start by looking at what it does right.

STAR POWER.

This script has the potential to be an Oscar winner. It is an emotional story that touches on the darker side of American history. When I talk about Star Power what I mean is the ability of A list actors to green-light pretty much any film that they want to make.

If the producers of this script could get Morgan Freeman to play the 2008 version of Warren, then this script would be greenlit almost instantly. 

When you're writing a screenplay you need to think of what will entice serious actors to your work. Ask yourself, does your script have the kind of character that an A lister would want to bring to life? 

If not, you need to rethink and rewrite your story. Sometimes this means re-thinking your entire premise/concept. 

CONCEPT

This story has a powerful concept at its core. It is essentially a revenge story - but rather than it being an angry-man-kills-people-who-did-him-wrong revenge story - it is an intelligent revenge story. Warren spent his life tracking down his brother's killers and seeing that they get justice through the correct means - the courts. 

When you're working on your own screenplay you need to think about your target audience. Are you looking to focus on people who will watch anything so long as there is a lot of gore? Or are you trying to target people who prefer a film that challenges them, that makes them think?

There's no right and wrong to it, but it is good to know who your target audience is. 

EXECUTION

The execution of this concept is well done in some regards but could definitely use some improvement in other areas. I really liked the use of a dual-time line. Some people don't like jumping back and forth between past and present, but when it's done well it is a great story telling technique. 

The best way to use a dual time line is to make sure what we learn in the past somehow furthers the story of the present. That happens here. In fact, the reveal of the story - the twist - happens in the past time line. I won't say what it is out of respect to the writers and producers of this story - but it is a great example of using a past time line to change our understanding of the present time line. 

That covers what this script has done well. 

Now lets look at what it could improve upon, 

SLOWNESS

This screenplay moves very slowly. It has a great opening hook. It has a very powerful following scene, but when it comes to the present-day storyline the pace suddenly slows down. We start to dwell in scenes that aren't really moving the story forward in anyway. There is a lot of development of ancillary characters who aren't central to the story. 

TRAVELLING SCENES 

These are scenes where we see the main character travelling somewhere. These scenes are scenes of death. Unless you use these scenes as a respite from an intense part of story telling - there is nothing to be learned from seeing a character travel anywhere. 

START LATE FINISH EARLY

This is a maxim I talk about a lot. It means starting your scene as LATE as possible and ending it as soon as you have excepted the main beat of that scene. 

This script has a lot of scenes that drag on, seemingly for no reason. Knowing that this is an adaptation of a novel made a lot of sense. In a novel you have as much time as you want to linger in scenes, for what ever reason this style of writing works in a novel. In a film this kind of writing slows your story down immensely. It is a kiss-of-death as your audience will grow bored very quickly. 

INCITING INCIDENT THEN NOTHING? 

In the story - Warren believes he has hunted down all the killers of his brother. He then receives a phone call telling him otherwise. 

This is the inciting incident as it shakes up his world and sends him on a new journey. Normally an inciting incident tests the hero's flaw - this one doesn't - but it doesn't seem too matter. This is enough of a catalyst to start Warren on a new journey. 

Only - that's the thing - instead of Warren setting off immediately to track down this last killer - we have a series off scenes where Warren goes about his every day life. 

It really slows the story down.

After the inciting incident typically your hero refuses the call to adventure as it test their flaw, only for there to be a second inciting incident (that I refer to as The Catalyst) - this forces the hero to accept the call to adventure and go on this new journey. 

While Warren does eventually set out to track down Earl - he does it in a very untimely manner. 

GOAL

Now, there is a great goal established here for Warren - track down the last killer of his brother - but until Warren finally begins pursuing that goal - there is no goal and what we're left with is a very slow opening to this story that has no real focus. 

Without a definite focus - your audience will grow bored, very quickly. 

ANCILLARY INFORMATION

When writing a novel it is fine to go off on tangents and give us loads of details about things that aren't directly related to the central story line - but in a film it doesn't work. Everything needs to be tied to that main storyline. 

In this script we have a few instances where we get information about Obama's run for president. This would be fine if it had something to do directly with the main story - but it doesn't. 

SMALLER CHARACTERS ...

Another area that this script could improve upon is that it develops smaller characters in too much detail. The person that Warren meets to tell him of the whereabouts of Earl is far too developed. 

This is a story about Warren hunting down Earl. It's fine to develop other characters if they're integral to the plot. But this character is not. 

Had this character want to come along for the ride with Earl, had they become a supporting character then it would be fine to develop them in great detail. But really, this character serves one purpose and one purpose only - to give Warren information. 

The take away - only develop your characters as much as they are important to the overall story. 

You wouldn't go into a full background detail of a waitress in a cafe if the only purpose they serve is to bring your hero a coffee, would you? 

IN SUMMARY

This story has the potential to be an Oscar winner and an A list magnet. In its current form it is not there yet. It needs to remove unnecessary story development, it needs to maintain a clear goal from the moment of the inciting incident, and it needs to trim the fat and improve the pace.

There are plenty of opportunities to add excitement in this story that are overlooked in its current form. 

If the producers and the screenwriter/s could re-work this story it would have a great chance of being an Oscar contender and more importantly - it could make a lot of money. 

PRODUCTION

I don't see this story being difficult to shoot. While it does have a 1964 timeline - all of it is set in rural areas. It's very easy to dress up a shack or a dirt road to make it look period. It's when you try to set a story in 1964 central Manhattan that your budget goes through the roof. 

The 2008 part of the story would be fairly straight forward to shoot. 

There is definitely an audience for this film, I just hope the producers can shape it into a more viable form than its current iteration. 

2018 BLACKLIST - SHARON

This script finished at number 70 on the 2018 Blacklist.

Written by Ryan Jaffe. 

logline: Biopic of Sharon Osbourne - wife of Ozzy Osbourne.

THE STORY...

We first meet Sharon in Wimbledon, England, 1970. 

She's socialising at a grand party at her father's house. It's a regular motel crew of artists, musicians, rockers and grim faced mobsters. 

Sharon is exceptional at her role of hostess. The members of The Small Faces play a medley of their hit Get Yourself Together.

Upstairs, we find Don Arden negotiating with the manager of The Small Faces. 

Don wants to take over the management of the group. The manager says no and Don retorts by having his 'Heavies' (English parlance for 'goons') grab the manager by his ankles and hang him over the edge of the balcony. 

Sharon joins her father as this 'negotiation' is taking place. She's not shocked by this scenario at all. Don gives Sharon a cigar and tells her to put it out on the manager's eyeball as he refuses to give up management of The Small Faces. 

Needless to say, the manager finally signs them over to Don. 

This opening scene sets up the main storyline - Sharon's battle with her father - Don. Her struggle to free herself from his tyrannical rule. 

Next, Sharon discovers the English heavy metal band - Black Sabbath - and their lead signer - Ozzy Osbourne - who Sharon will eventually marry. 

At first, Sharon is complicit with her father in running his management of musicians in a dictatorial kind of way that Saddam Hussein might have found unnecessarily violent. 

Very early on Sharon finds herself pregnant. She has an abortion and soon finds out that her father is more interested and concerned about money than he is for the emotional and physical well being of his daughter. 

The day after her abortion, Don asks Sharon to convince her boyfriend to sleep with Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen, so he can try to take over their management. 

By chance, Sharon overhears that Black Sabbath are looking for new management. 

In a heartbeat, Sharon packs a bag, flies to America, meets with the lead of the band a guy called Tony - and talks him into letting her be their manager. 

Sharon is very pleased with herself, she's just single handedly taken over the management of one of the world's leading bands!

But as she soon discovers her father Don is not going to let her manage the band in her own right - he wants a cut of their money, and when he says cut, what he really means is ALLLLLL of it. 

The story from here goes where you might expect it to. 

Sharon fights with her father. 

There is infighting in the band. The lead singer Ozzy's partying becomes too much of a liability and he's finally kicked out of the band.

Sharon and Ozzy form an unlikely alliance, and as history will tell us, their bond and team work is powerful and magical and violent and destructive and creative all at the same time. 

The ultimate question becomes, will Sharon ever be able to get out from under her father's shadow and soar with Ozzy?

WILL THIS FILM MAKE MONEY?

While I loved this screenplay and it was exceptionally well written, I'm not sure there's enough of an audience waiting to see this movie.

Having said that, I believe if you angled this story in the right way you could find an audience. At its core, this story is about a woman overcoming and escaping the oppressive and destructive relationship with her father. 

This is a story that is very well worth telling. Also, that this is a story about the rise of Ozzy Osbourne, you have an inbuilt audience - those who love Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne music. 

So, while I'm not certain this film could make money - if you tapped into the demographic of die-hard Ozzy fans and pushed this film as an empowerment piece you might just find enough people excited by this story to turn a profit. 

WHAT IT DID WELL

The world created in this screenplay felt very real. Often screenplays feel manufactured, they feel like a fake story. While being a biopic obviously lends a sense reality, the interactions and the characters really feel like they're alive.  

How can you make your script feel real? How can you make it feel alive?

It comes down to realistic dialogue and three dimensional characters. 

Dialogue is a hard thing to get right. 

One of the worst kinds of dialogue is On The Nose Dialogue. This is when a character says exactly what they're thinking verbatim. 

That might happen in real life sometimes, but mostly people are cryptic. Think about yourself, how often have you felt a certain way but instead of saying exactly how you feel, you expressed yourself in an indirect way? 

This is the nature of all relationships. This is how you make dialogue interesting. 

Next time you're writing dialogue try this process... 

Write your scene in the most boring and literal on the nose way you can imagine. 

Now, when you have done this, go back and re-write every piece of dialogue in an indirect way. Think about how you convey anger instead of saying 'I'm angry'. Think about indirect ways your characters could express that they're feeling lonely instead of just saying, 'I feel lonely.'

Use the On The Nose dialogue as a launching off point to ensure you know what it is your character is trying to convey in that moment, but have them do so in an indirect way.

Another way to make your dialogue more interesting is with Metaphorical dialogue. This is where your character makes a point by way of metaphor. 

Say your character wants to say that life is ever changing and in a constant state of flux. Rather than just saying that verbatim, perhaps they could talk about waves, and how no wave from sea to shore ever stays the same. All waves are constantly merging with other waves, sometimes separating and forming new waves. In this instance your character has used a wave as a metaphor for what they were trying to say about life. 

When your audience gets a chance to think in a film it engages their brain. When their brain is engaged in a meaningful way you will maintain their attention. 

2018 BLACKLIST - SPARK

This script finished at the bottom of the 2018 blacklist. 

Sometimes you read a script that does everything right and it becomes an inspiration. You re-read the script looking at how they executed the various aspects of the screenplay so well. You learn from this - you learn from someone who knows what they're doing.

Sometimes you read a script and it does everything wrong. Even though it does everything wrong I find these scripts inspirational - because just like the script that does everything right, these scripts show us what NOT to do. 

Today's offering, Spark, does many things wrong. 

Let's look at them and see what we can learn. 

First the story. 

Naomi is our hero, we meet her as she's graduating from Stanford. She is African-American and Naomi's family are the "lone black faces in a sea of mostly white."

We then find Naomi at a well to do family home, celebrating her graduation. 

She is met by an array of well wishers who she is reluctant to talk with. 

We next find Naomi living with her new flatmate - Diane. 

They go out for a drink, Naomi meets a hot bearded guy called Ben, takes him home and they have a one night stand.

Naomi has been recruited for a tech firm and she starts her new job. At the new job it is competitive, but Naomi is strong and capable. 

Soon, there's a new employee at the company. You guessed it! It's Ben.

Awkward!

Ben and Naomi discuss it and decide to keep their relationship professional. 

But it doesn't take long until they start sleeping together. 

Getting bored yet?

I am. 

Ben and Naomi are put on a client case together. They have to wine and dine an elderly executive to keep the client happy. 

Naomi and Ben's affair continues until Naomi finds out that Ben has a girlfriend. 

Are you still bored?

I am. 

As revenge, Naomi tries to sabotage Ben's relationship by putting a small lipstick stain on his shirt. 

This almost ends Ben's relationship and he gets justifiably annoyed with her. 

Ben then invites Naomi to a client dinner, but he purposefully gives her the wrong time and she turns up late, making her look stupid. 

You'd think that was 1-1 - but no, Naomi reports their arguing to her boss saying that Ben has been inappropriate with her in the office environment. 

The script then skews into Naomi being treated like a pariah, and socially cast out from the company. She's put on 'administrative leave'.

Naomi feels that she has been treated this way because of her race and gender and sets out to destroy the company and Ben. 

There's so much wrong with this script that it's great! There's so much to learn from it. 

Firstly, did you notice that there was nothing high concept about it? It is a plain- straight forward drama. 

There's very few producers out there who want to make a straight forward drama in the feature film format. Dramas work much better in the TV series format.

If you want to stand a better shot of getting your feature film script made, it's better to give it a unique angle, something that makes it stand out from the rest. Something that makes it high concept. 

Next, there is no goal. Not until the very end of the script when Naomi decides that she wants to crush Ben and the company. But that goal isn't established until around page 90.

If you want your script to keep your audience engaged you need to have established a goal by page 25. Page 30 at the very latest. 

The dialogue was plain and very average. With the exception of Diane, every other character sounded the same. 

To make your characters sound like they're real people you need variance in the way they speak. Think of the people in your real life and how they speak. Does everyone speak in the same manner? No, of course not. So to give your script life, vary the way your characters speak. 

START LATE FINISH EARLY

It's simple - start the scene as close to the main beat then finish the scene a soon as you've executed that beat.

In this script characters were constantly saying Hi, how are you? Characters were constantly entering new locations, walking places, taking Ubers places, driving.

You're not moving your story forward if your characters are travelling places. 

Cut out the fat, cut straight to your characters in the middle of a conversation - preferably a conversation that involves - CONFLICT.

This brings us to the next short-coming of this script. 

CONFLICT - or rather the severe lack of it. There's basically no conflict in this script until Naomi finds out that Ben has a girlfriend. 

That happens around page 50. 

Until then there is no conflict. No conflict means your audience is bored, bored, bored. 

Like I was reading this script. 

EMPATHY is another huge lacking of this script.

There are two types of positive empathy. Active - that's where the hero DOES things for other people that we like them for. Then there's passive, this is when bad stuff happens to your hero and we feel sorry for them.

While this script had ample doses of passive empathy for Naomi, I can't think of a single beat where Naomi went out of her way to help someone other than herself. 

When you don't have positive empathy beats for your hero, then you're not connecting with your audience. 

Predictable - this script threw me no curve balls. After about 10 pages I was predicting where the script was going for there rest of the entire screenplay. 

If there's one sure thing that's death to a movie it's predictability. When your audience guesses what's coming next and they're right, then they check out. They grow bored very quickly. 

Never have a character tell another character what the audience already knows. This script was guilty of this little screenwriting crime on a couple of occasions. 

If we've just had a big reveal in one scene, what ever you do, don't cut to the next scene where character A tells character B all about what just happened in the previous scene. It's really boring for the audience to wait for a character to catch up with what they already know. 

There was also no urgency. Not every script needs a ticking clock, but they sure help to keep your audience engaged. 

Now, this script had no goal and no urgency, so you've effectively got a character who doesn't have to get anything done in no particular rush. 

This is not a winning formula for writing successful movies. 

In summary - I'd give this script a 3/10. It's a great first effort, but it would make a very dull, predictable film that wouldn't make any money. 

There is a lot to learn from this script, however. That's why I love reading unproduced screenplays - there's always something they can teach us.