The Scriptshadow community demanded a review of this script. So it’s time to give them what they want!

Genre: Thriller
Premise: After stealing a traumatized war-dog from the army, a washed-up veteran battles a relentless posse through an inhospitable mountain range to give her a new life in the wilds.
About: This script won the Grand Prize of the Page Awards! Bjack, the writer, has been a loyal reader and commenter at Scriptshadow forever. He’s had one review before which you can check out here.
Writer: Jack Azadi
Details: 103 pages

I believe this has been submitted to several Scriptshadow showdowns, as well as my contests, but has never been chosen. Why? I’ve been pretty vocal that the concept isn’t my cup of tea.

But hey, one of the coolest things a screenwriter can accomplish is to put a script in front of a doubter and win them over. It doesn’t happen often. But when it does, it’s sweeter than whipped cream on pumpkin pie.

Heck, it looks like it’s going to happen at the box office soon. I thought the Project Hail Mary book completely imploded when its secret reveal arrived. But after seeing the latest trailer, I’m now thinking it could be great.

I hope Mal is great too.

Let’s find out if it is.

Sergeant Dean Black-Feather was a soldier in Afghanistan. He was part of a K-9 unit with a dog named Mal. When we meet them, he sends Mal into a cave to get info on Taliban soldiers inside. His superior makes an order that puts the dog in danger. The dog gets attacked by the Taliban but survives.

Nine months later, Dean is back in the US, drinking all the time and getting in enough trouble that he occasionally ends up in jail. After he’s out, he gets word that Mal is back in the US and at a nearby base. He’s been having some intense behavioral problems.

When Dean gets there and reconnects with Mal, they give him the bad news. They have to put Mal down cause he bit off a serviceman’s fingers. Dean is not going to let that happen so he sneaks the dog off the base. He’s immediately chased by Lt. Ashley Miles, a reckless soldier who has a lot of pent up anger for not yet getting to see real action. Ashley is given the order to kill the dog on sight.

Ashley visits Sheriff Bill Gatewood to get some intel on Dean. Gatewood decides that he and Deputy Cole are going to join Ashley to corner Dean at his house. The problem is, Dean’s already getting the hell out of here. He takes Mal and heads into the woods. They follow him.

What follows is a cat and mouse game as Dean heads deeper and deeper into the forest, all the way up to the nearby mountains. He and Mal encounter some hunters and Mal viciously attacks them. Then he viciously attacks Dean! That’s when Dean realizes Mal really is sick. But he still picks Mal over these army assholes following him.

And it *is* assholes now, as the army volunteers a freaking attack helicopter to help out. Somehow, Dean and Mal defeat that thing, and head even deeper into the woods. At this point, Ashley realizes that if they don’t catch up and kill Mal soon, the two of them may be gone forever. So Ashley ups her game and prepares for a final showdown with Dean and the dog.

Okay, let’s get into what I liked.

I liked how easy the script was to read. I liked how quickly my eyes moved down the page. Not just that but, even as my eyes raced down the page, I could always retain the information I was reading. That’s a skill. Not every writer who writes in a minimalist style can do that.

I liked the type of dog at the center of the story. I’ve read a lot of dog scripts but not any about a war dog. That immediately makes the story stand out in the K-9 space.

I also liked the clever manner in which Jack explored PTSD. We’ve seen an endless number of movies about returning soldiers with PTSD. And so, at this point, it’s just noise. By shifting that PTSD over to a dog, it gives the disease new life and a fresh way to discuss it.

And finally, I can see this doing REALLY WELL with conservative audiences. If I were Jack, I would do everything in my power to get this in front of Angel Studios. It seems like the kind of thing they would love.

Okay, now… did I personally like this script?

I would probably answer that with a soft “no.” And let me explain why. I was reading through the script and, like I said, it was moving fast. There was always something happening. But something kept nagging me. There was an aspect to the story that wasn’t working and I couldn’t figure out what it was.

Then it hit me.

The concept was shaky.

I don’t care how you spin it. The army sending someone out to kill a dog at all costs just because it was prone to violent outbursts. I mean… I just didn’t believe that. At one point, there are 8 different people trying to kill this dog. Some of them are even trying to kill Dean!

And I’m sitting there thinking, “It’s a dog.” “Why do you care so much??”

It’s not like the dog had a jump drive taped to its collar with the Epstein files on it. So, no matter what happened, I kept going back to that. I mean there’s a Rambo level helicopter attack in this. And I kept thinking, “It’s a dog!” I couldn’t wrap my head around any logical reason why so many resources were being used to take down a dog whose crime was that he gets angry sometimes. Under that logic, the army should be hunting down 1 million dogs across America.

The other big issue was that Jack used a retroactive motivation. And retroactive motivations rarely work. I can think of a few. Shawshank Redemption comes to mind. But, in Mal, we spend the whole movie racing through these mountainous forests and I never knew why!

Already, I’m not buying the army’s motivation. Now you’re adding a main character without a motivation. Where are we going? Why are we going there? We don’t know. Until after the fact. We finally learn that we’ve arrived in reservation land where the army can’t chase the dog anymore.

Retroactive motivation doesn’t mean we all of a sudden feel motivation for the previous 90 minutes. We still participated in that 90 minutes, clueless as to why our hero was going where he was going. And that’s a big deal. Cause it frustrated me when I was reading it. I kept thinking, “Is he just going into the forest for the next 10 years to live with his dog like a hermit?”

By the way, neither of these things made this a bad script. The things about the script that were working helped offset a portion of these problems. But, in the end, the problems were bigger than what worked (in my personal reading experience).

As for the characters, I didn’t feel like I knew Dean well. I knew he loved Mal. I knew he was a drunk. But that’s about it. So he felt thin. Meanwhile, Ashley was way overcooked. It never made sense to me why she was so determined to kill this dog other than that’s what the plot needed.

If I were Jack, I would change Ashley into a man, into someone who was way more physically threatening, and someone who was a full on psychopath. Not in the Hollywood sense. But in the way he feels no emotion whatsoever. He’s REALLY heartless and scary. I can tell you for certain that I would’ve been a lot more into this script with him as a villain. Ashley felt like a gnat on coke. She was going to eventually find you. But you could handle her with a fly-swatter.

Finally, the ending. The ending is sad. And if I’m going to invest 90 minutes into this, I don’t want to be sad if I don’t have to be. Dean and Mal need to end up together or this movie doesn’t work. Period end of story.

Despite this critique, I can totally see why this did well in the contest. The writing is of a higher quality than 95% of contest entries out there. And I’m guessing that the PTSD commentary through the dog is what put it over the top. It gave it that extra pop that likely inspired the judges to anoint it over the others.

So I congratulate Jack. Regardless of my meanie analysis, I’m happy that he’s getting attention for Mal and hope he continues to do so. :)

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

What I learned: Definitely avoid retroactive motivation if possible. The whole point of motivation is to tell the audience why what we’re doing is so important. If you don’t tell them that, they’re always a little confused about why things are happening.

What I learned 2: If I don’t fear the bad guy, I don’t feel a whole lot of tension during the story. And I never feared Ashley for a second. That’s why I think she should be changed into someone a lot more formidable.

Was today’s script written by Taylor Sheridan or Bill Nye The Science Guy?

Genre: Drama
Premise: A billionaire hires a failed astronaut to help him build a ship that will get humanity back to the moon.
About: This is the script straw that, supposedly, broke the camel’s back. That camel being Taylor Sheridan. A couple of weeks ago, the shocking story broke that Sheridan was fleeing his home base, Paramount, and going over to NBC Universal. That deal is somewhere near the 1 billion dollar range. Although there were several reasons cited for Sheridan jumping ship, the Capture The Flag situation is the one that was said got Sheridan riled up. When David Ellison bought the company, he brought in two women as his primary film executives. And one of their first acts was to read this script and send Taylor Sheridan a bunch of notes on it. That ticked him off and he left. Today, we find out if those executives were right.
Writer: Taylor Sheridan
Details: 104 pages

When it comes to screenwriting, there is one decision that is more important than any other.

You guys all know it because you read my site. But it’s nice to be reminded every once in a while. By the way, that’s one of the great things about reading screenplays. You’re constantly being reminded of what works and what doesn’t.

So, what is that decision?

It’s the concept. It’s the concept. It’s the concept.

Without a good concept, you really are up shit creek without a paddle. And the screenwriting shit creek is particularly shitty. It’s not calm. It’s high blustery waves that are coming at you every second. So, without that concept, you’re going to get covered in excrement really fast.

Now, we always talk about concepts in the context of originality and impact. Ideally, you want that big splashy high concept idea that gets people excited.

But what I don’t often talk about is that, even if you don’t have a big splashy concept, you still need a concept that CREATES A STRONG STORY IDEA.

And today’s script is an example of what you get when you don’t have that.

When we meet Jerod Ramsey, he is taking a plane full of civilians up into low-orbit space, the first person to ever achieve the feat. However, Jerod isn’t happy with the result. It only lasts a minute and it doesn’t move the needle of his legacy. He needs something bigger!

While touring JPL headquarters a couple of days later, Jerod sees this really wild two-rowed rocket with 20 separate engines. He says, “WHO MADE THAT!??” And they tell him Randy did. Randy was an astronaut who never made it into space who is now a propulsion specialist. That night, Jerod makes the case to Randy why he should quit and come work for him.

Jerod is determined to get to the moon. Something we… have already done. But I guess everybody in the space world is really excited about doing it again! Except that there’s no money in going to the moon. So Jerod and Randy have to figure out a way to do it cheaper. And Randy’s weirdo two-row 20-engine rocket is what’s going to get them there.

If that sounds boring, don’t worry. Cause they’re also trying to win a contest against other people trying to do the same thing! Oh wait. That sounds boring also. What follows is a whole lotta science! As Randy attempts to use a lot of engineering to achieve something that we already achieved… 55 years ago.

That can’t be it, right? There’s got to be something that ups the ante. Don’t worry, I got you. Jerod gives Randy… A DEADLINE! Yup. That’s the big plot development in the script. Jerod makes Randy work a lot faster than he’s used to. And that gives Randy a lot of anxiety! Meanwhile, Jerod just doesn’t want to die as an unknown rich dude. He wants to leave a legacy behind. So he needs his man Randy to succeed. Will they figure it out? I am not on the edge of my seat hoping to find out.

The big issue with Capture The Flag is that the concept doesn’t have any stakes attached to it. It has a goal! Complete this ship. But there are zero stakes. We’ve already been to space. We’ve already been to the moon. So, if you’re setting a movie in 2025 where the main goal is to get into space and get to the moon, you’re not going to have a whole lot of people interested in what happens next.

Your screenplay’s dead right there. That’s it.

There’s nothing you can do to fix it.

Which is what baffled me so much about this screenplay. I know that Taylor Sheridan understands the importance of stakes. So I spent the majority of this reading experience trying to figure out what it was about this story that made him want to tell it.

My best guess is that a) it’s a very sort of ‘Go America’ type story, which I know he values. It’s about American ingenuity and the race to do something important. And then, I’m guessing that Sheridan has this secret science-nerd part of him that he’s finally letting out. Because a lot of this script is trying to solve complex engineering problems. Maybe Sheridan was inspired by Andy Weir’s The Martian.

If you fail the concept test, is there any shot at your script being good?

Let me answer that with a Scriptshadow tennis analogy.

When I was still competing, I rolled my ankle BADLY in a match. I’ve never felt that much pain before. The next match, I tried to play. I could move pretty well to my right, the direction that didn’t require me to push off the bad ankle. And I could swing fine. I could still serve pretty well. But could I play as competitively as I could before that? No. Not even close. And I lost badly.

Going into a script with a weak concept is like going into a match with a bad ankle. It just makes everything harder.

I don’t know if any of you have been watching The Beast In Me, the new Netflix show, but the main character, Aggie, is a writer. The show is about a rich guy named Nile Jarvis, who’s just moved in next door to Aggie. Nile was recently accused of murdering his wife, who went missing.

Aggie has been stuck on her new book forever. The book is about the friendship between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia. One day Nile, who she becomes a sort of “frenemy” with, asks her what she’s working on and she tells him about the book. He mimes snoring and says, “That sounds like the most boring book in the world.” She’s, of course, taken aback. And then he says, “You should write about me instead.”  So, she does.

This is the perfect example of an idea that’s DOA versus an idea that’s exciting.  Friendship between two people on the Supreme Court?  Borrrrrrring.  A look into the mind of a potential killer where you maybe get a confession?  Exciting!

I don’t even know what to say about the specific story of Capture The Flag other than it’s boring as hell! Maybe even more so than a book about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia. It’s just endless repetitive scenes about engineering breakthroughs on this rocket-spaceship thing they’re trying to build. All very scientifically discussed.

Taylor, buddy, you’re not going to want to hear what I say next. And this comes from someone who’s given a positive review to literally every single thing I’ve read of yours.

But this one? Those female executives were right on the money. I don’t know how you read this script and not have a billion notes for the writer. There’s one exchange near the end of the script that I believe encapsulates everything that’s wrong with the idea. Jerod says: “The one thing that can change that is putting the Magellan on the moon. Help me do that. Help me do that by living out your dream.” Randy stands from the table, walks a distance off. Looks at the sky. Randy: “If you want me to finish it, you have to give it back to NASA.” Jerod: “They’ll never pay the license fee —”

Look, the reason they had so many notes is that the concept doesn’t work. If the concept doesn’t work, EVERY ASPECT OF THE SCRIPT ISN’T GOING TO WORK. So, you’re going to have a million notes. And you’re going to have characters talking about freaking LICENSING FEES during the climax. No script’s climax should ever EVER involve LICENSING FEES!!!!! The reality is, there’s only one true note. That note is: Come up with a better concept. Then all these notes go away.

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

What I learned 1: Stay in your lane. Taylor Sheridan is EXTREMELY GOOD at writing about Americana. This script shows what happens when you move out of your lane. If you’re an aspiring writer, I would recommend doing what Taylor Sheridan did, which is to keep writing in the same genre until you master it.

What I learned 2: Fictional stories that are written like they’re based on real life stories never work.

In a shocking upset, Now You See Me defeated The Running Man, which only pulled in 17 million dollars for the weekend.

See, this is why I don’t like it when Hollywood shoves someone in our faces. It isn’t organic. It doesn’t feel genuine. And when you shove someone in front of our eyes and you say, “You must now accept this person as a movie star,” we’re going to push back. Being a movie star is literally the hardest thing to achieve in existence. It must be earned. And Glen Powell hasn’t earned it.

Also, these aspiring movie stars don’t have any clue how to become a movie star anymore. The way it’s done is that you find the genre that audiences love you in and you make a bunch of movies in that genre, with slight variations here and there. THEN, about 5-7 years into your career, you branch out and try more challenging material, like weird indie films and such. And the great thing is, if you suck at that, you’ve already established a lane that people love you in, so you can go back to it.

But these new impatient Millennial and Gen-X wannabe movie stars try to be everything right away and confuse the hell out of audiences. Glen Powell breaks out in a romantic comedy. Then he does a weird TV comedy. Now he’s doing this action film. He hasn’t established himself enough for us to give him that leniency.

Does the 1-2 failed punch of Chad Powers and Running Man mean the end of Glen Powell’s career before it even started? No. He’s got one more shot. Ghostwriter, which is going to be JJ Abrams big return to directing, has him as a sci-fi novelist whose sci-fi worlds start coming to life. If that bombs, then yes, it’s over. He’s Eric Bana.

Glen Powell would also benefit from some media training. He comes off as way too rehearsed and he doesn’t seem to show any genuine parts of himself at all. I wish you luck Glenny boy.

But what I would really like to talk you about today is the third episode of Pluribus. You guys know I can’t stop talking about the importance of the third episode of a TV series and how it is the single most accurate indicator of whether a show is going to succeed or not.

Because what the third episode tells you is whether you really have a TV show. The first episode is a mini-movie that sets up the concept and asks a few questions. The second episode is a natural extension of the fallout from the first episode, usually initiated by the cliffhanger from episode 1.

But two major shifts happen in the third episode. One, you shift to a different writer. The creator writes the first two episodes. The number 1 staff writer writes episode 3. So you’re going to your bench, and the bench’s performance is the real determinant of whether your show is going to be good. Cause the bench will be writing the majority of your show.

And then the other shift is that episode 3 is the first episode that the writer hasn’t meticulously planned yet. They know exactly what episode 1 is going to look like. They’ve beat out 90% of episode 2. But no creators ever think about episode 3 ahead of time other than in abstract terms.

But more than anything else, episode 3 is the first episode where you’re settling into the long walk that is a TV show. What are your week-to-week episodes going to look like? Episode 3 gives us our first peek at that. And if you don’t have a show that can generate consistently strong plot and character beats, we’re going to start seeing it here.

Which, unfortunately, is something I noticed right away in the third episode of Pluribus. By the way, why am I so focused on Pluribus? Because it’s the first show since Severance that has the potential to be a smart entertaining science-fiction show. These are rare. So, when they come around, I grab my praying emoji hands and I blanket my screen with them.

The third episode of Pluribus starts with a literal cold open flashback of Carol and her girlfriend (who died in episode 1) taking a vacation at an ice hotel. After that, we have Carol flying back from Europe after meeting the six other English-speaking people on earth who haven’t been affected by the virus. That meeting was a disaster so now Carol is going home.

While on the plane, she decides, of the five non-English-speaking people remaining, one is worth giving a shot to. So she calls him several times but he keeps hanging up on her, presumably because he thinks she might be one of the “collective.”

So Carol goes home to New Mexico, and sits at home watching TV when she hears a car outside. She heads out, sees the car screech away, and sees that they left her a hot dinner. She calls her personal concierge (who’s been modeled to look like Carol’s dream woman in the hopes of making Carol happy) and tells her she doesn’t want them giving her food.

The next day, she goes to her fancy healthy grocery store, Sprouts, only to find that there’s no food in it anymore. The concierge informs her that the world has consolidated all of the food to make it easier to get to people. Carol bitches at her and says she wants her Sprouts by the end of the week. She hangs up and, within a couple of minutes hears trucks approaching. She then watches as a dozen semi trucks and a hundred people quickly restock the entire Sprouts. Carol has her grocery store back.

She goes back home and on one of her many frustrated phone calls with the collective, sarcastically mentions she wishes she had a grenade. A couple of minutes later, her concierge shows up with a grenade. Carol and the concierge then get in a fight, Carol accidentally pulls the pin from the grenade, the concierge freaks out, grabs it and throws it out the window, but becomes injured in the subsequent explosion.

Carol then rushes the concierge to the hospital. While she’s being tended to, another collective member checks in on Carol and their conversation segues back to the fact that they idiotically gave her a live grenade. This prompts Carol to ask them what they won’t give her.  A bazooka? Yes, they’d give it to her. A tank? Yes, they’d give it to her. A nuclear bomb? They hesitate a little on this one but… yes, they would ultimately give it to her. And that’s it. That’s the end of the episode.

I went into detail on all the major moments from the episode here for a reason. I want you to understand why the third episode doesn’t work as well as the first two, and why it’s such a bad omen for the remainder of the show.

Before we do that, however, I want to establish why the first two episodes worked. In the first episode, we have a clear storyline. The shit hits the fan and our main character has to deal with it. It’s a simple story structure and a very effective one. Remember, stories don’t have to be big and complex to be good. Quite the opposite. The best stories are often simple.

The second episode uses a goal set up from the first episode to drive its story. There are six English speaking people in the world other than Carol who have not gotten the virus. Naturally, Carol wants to meet them so they can figure out if there’s anything they can do to destroy the collective. So she flies to Europe to meet them.

What I want you to pay attention to here is how a strong goal with high stakes can give you a good episode of television. Because that’s what gives you a STORY. Someone trying to acheive an important goal and running into obstacles is a story. And it’s a very easy structure to build a 55 minute episode around.

The first thing you’ll notice about episode 3, is that unlike episodes 1 & 2, there is no overarching plotline propelling the episode forward. I knew the episode was in trouble the second the cold open started: a flashback to Carol on a vacation with her girlfriend.

What did this scene do to push the overall narrative forward? Nothing. It is dead time. The writers would argue that it’s giving us more information about our characters, which presumably, would make us care more for them. But that’s not true. It doesn’t tell us anything new about them at all. Never use a flashback if it tells us something we already know or that we could’ve already assumed.

Then we cut to the actual story part of the episode and, unlike the first two episodes, you’ll notice that no big goal emerges. Carol is on a plane bummed out that nobody else wants to try and save the world with her. Then, almost as an afterthought, she decides to get in touch with one of the non-collective individuals who wasn’t at the meeting.

Because this is something Carol decides to do on the spot, it has zero stakes attached to it. That’s a good screenwriting lesson you can take away right now. If a character is doing something they only thought of several minutes ago, the stakes of that action are going to be lower than ground level. We won’t care.

When Carol gets home, she’s got nothing to do! And this was the first moment where I really noticed that the screenwriting was in trouble. If we’re two hours into your 60 hour series and your main character doesn’t have anything to do, that’s a BAD OMEN.

It only gets worse from there. The big plot point that arrives next is… they deliver dinner to Carol? THAT’S your big plot point to jump-start the episode’s narrative?? Oof, that’s bad news. You’re trying to convince me to be entertained by Carol not wanting food? Something – by the way – that they’re already established in the previous episodes! So beyond it being a weak plot development on its own, it’s a redundant one too.

The high point of the episode is Carol going to the empty grocery store and the collective refilling the entire store for her. It’s a fun sequence, without a doubt. But it’s fool’s gold. It’s the kind of thing that, when you’re writing the episode and you’re worried that not enough is going on, you point to that sequence and say, “Yeah, but I have this great sequence here.”

A sequence in an episode that has no connection to any plot is not a good thing. If anything, it highlights that you don’t have a story running through your episode.

Then Carol goes home again. She watches TV again (more time where your hero has nothing to do!!! in only the third episode!!!). And then we introduce this grenade subplot. Carol gets in a fight with the concierge and the grenade goes off and the concierge is injured.

Let me just say that the concierge has already been injured TWICE in this show. So this is the third time. Beyond all the problems I’m listing here, you’re also repeating yourself. But even beyond that, I rolled my eyes when this happened because now Carol is taking her to the hospital. And that’s the kind of plot development you bust out when you’re running out of ideas. It literally felt like the writer was making up the story as he went along.

The most important point to take from all this is that THERE IS NO UNIFYING PLOT THREAD PUSHING THIS EPISODE ALONG. Notice how we’re just moving from random development to random development. That’s a major sign that an episode is poorly written.

You need one overarching plotline to push the episode along because, without that, you put your characters in this compromising position by which the only way to make the story dramatic is to come up with these little miniature inciting incidents that get your character reacting — like realizing she can call another of the 11 humans, like delivering her food, like giving her a grenade, like the concierge getting injured.

This was my whole worry after watching the pilot — that there wasn’t a clear path where extended plotlines could be built for the characters. With Pluribus failing the Scriptshadow Episode 3 test, it is now perilously close to imploding.

So, here’s what needs to happen for it to save itself. For one, NO MORE FLASHBACKS. If we see another flashback in episode 4, this series is done. Because it means they’re trying to fill up space. They don’t have enough plot so they need ANY SCENES THEY CAN FIND to get them to an acceptable running time.

But the main thing is they need to get back to using episodes as self-contained stories like they did the first and second episodes. This is why Gray’s Anatomy and CSI and The Good Wife can generate so many episodes so effortlessly. Because each episode generates a medical issue that needs solving, or a case that needs winning, or a murder that needs investigating.

You don’t have that luxury when you’ve written a serialized show. So it requires you to come up with that driving central force at the beginning of each episode. If you don’t, you run into the problem Pluribus ran into here. Without an overarching narrative, you’re writing a ‘grasping at straws’ narrative whether you like to or not. What little desperate plot beat can you think of now that will get you through another 8 pages?

It’s a simple solution, guys. Build a full story structure into every episode!

Did anybody see The Running Man or Pluribus Episode 3? If so, what did you think??

I’m currently consulting for a writer-director on his latest script. He’s made several movies, but this time, he’s determined to get the script right before he starts shooting early next year. He wants it as sharp as it can possibly be.

It’s led to some fascinating discussions between us. After each consultation, we hop on a Zoom call to unpack the notes. A typical exchange goes like this: I’ll say, “This scene doesn’t work because of A and B.” And he’ll reply, “Yeah, but you have to understand, with the way I’m going to shoot it, it will work.” Then he walks me through his plan, and with a few minor exceptions, he convinces me that he’s got it covered.

These conversations have reminded me of an under-discussed aspect of screenwriting: sometimes, writing what’s best for the movie isn’t what’s best for the screenplay. That distinction matters because ninety-nine percent of screenwriters are not directors. Unlike the writer I’m working with, they don’t have the luxury of fixing their “screenplay mistakes” on set.

So as a writer, you often face a troubling dilemma. Do you write what makes the best screenplay? Or do you write what will ultimately make the best movie?

Let me give you a recent example. The opening of a script I just consulted on introduces the protagonist talking to a family member over the phone. Every quarter of a page, the writer cuts to a factory where toys are being manufactured. We see the intricacies of the process, the molds, the machinery, the assembly lines, while hearing the voice-over of the phone conversation discussing something entirely unrelated. We don’t yet know how this toy factory plays into things.  At this moment in time, it’s just a series of images without context.  The script keeps cutting back and forth between the phone call and this factory multiple times until the scene ends.

On screen, this would work brilliantly. Intercutting is one of cinema’s superpowers. It can compress information, build mystery, create tension, and generate emotion, especially when paired with music. It’s one of the most expressive tools in a filmmaker’s arsenal.

But on the page? It’s nearly the opposite.

A lot of writers don’t realize how much of a mess it is because they haven’t read enough screenplays. When you’re reading a script, especially early on, you’re already juggling a lot. You’re trying to get your bearings in the story, track new characters, understand their relationships, and grasp the setup. A good reader knows that missing key information in the first act can derail the entire experience, which is why clarity is everything.

Intercutting disrupts that clarity. It prevents flow. Every cut is like being in a car with a student driver when they indiscriminately SLAM ON THE BREAKS.

The same goes for montages. Montages work wonderfully in movies, but they’re torture on the page. When I see one in a script, I instinctively roll my eyes, shift out of “enjoyment mode,” and put on my “analysis hat.” I’m no longer immersed. I’m instead parsing information. Most montages are simply lists of six to ten shots providing updates on what’s happening with the characters. Rarely are they written with dramatic weight or emotional build.

The point is simple: not everything that plays well on screen reads well on the page. And since your screenplay will be read long before it’s ever shot, your job is to write what works on the page. Which means: avoid things that make the read clunky, or boring, or a chore, even if they lead to a great movie moment.

How committed to this ideology am I?  I wouldn’t put Luke looking up at the two suns at sunset in the Star Wars script.  One of the most iconic shots in movie history!  Now, to be clear, I’d put it in the movie.  But I would not put it in the script (and if memory serves me correctly, it wasn’t in the script).  In the script it would be nothing.  It would be a moment that barely registered with the reader, if at all.  That’s how different it is on the page compared to on screen.

I’d take it a step further. When you’re choosing what screenplay to write, choose a concept that works well as a read, not as a film. What kinds of scripts read best? Simple plots. Low character counts. Clear goals. Stories with long, uninterrupted stretches of narrative flow. Think Novocaine, Send Help, Drop, Sinners, Alien, Wolfs, The Beekeeper, Ballerina.

I’m not saying I love all those movies. I’m saying that if I were an unknown screenwriter and someone told me I’d be killed in six months if I didn’t sell a script, that’s the kind of script I’d write WITHOUT HESITATION. That’s right. I’m betting MY LIFE on this advice. A clear, high-stakes, high-concept story with a small cast and a clean, propulsive narrative.

The opposite of that? Something like House of Dynamite. It doesn’t have a main character, which immediately disorients the reader. It constantly jumps between storylines and locations, making it difficult to follow. There’s heavy technical jargon. But the constant jumping is the killer. Every time you move to a new time or place, the reader has to reset. Where are we now, what’s happening, how does this connect?

Movies can handle that because the audience doesn’t have to work. They see an image, and it registers instantly. But on the page, words require effort. The reader has to visualize and process every new setting and situation on their own. Too much of that and fatigue sets in.

So what if you don’t like writing those clean, linear stories? What if you gravitate toward the sprawling ensemble pieces, scripts like My Darling California or One Battle After Another or Independence Day? Stories that cut between dozens of characters and constantly evolving events?

There’s nothing wrong with that. But you have to approach these screenplays with caution and strategy. One rule I live by is this: the more complex the script, the more you need to hold the reader’s hand. If your story has 25 characters, 10 locations, multiple time periods, and flashbacks (something like Cloud Atlas) then you need to guide the reader carefully. Slow down during complicated sequences. Orient them clearly. Make sure they never feel lost.

And when you’re tempted to intercut between two scenes happening simultaneously, consider writing them one after the other instead. It might not be as cinematic on paper, but it’ll be infinitely more readable.

I can already hear some of you grumbling. You’ll cite movies that break these rules. You’ll say this advice stifles creativity. Look, you can write however you want. But from a reader’s point of view, and from years of monitoring what sells in Hollywood, your best chance of getting noticed is with a script that’s simple, clear, and effortless to read. It may not be the most cinematic script. That doesn’t matter yet. What matters is that you get noticed. And that happens by writing what works on the page.

Of course, there’s a best-of-both-worlds scenario. That’s what I loved about Osculum Infame. It was that rare script that worked beautifully on the page but was going to work even better on screen. That’s the sweet spot you want to hit. But if you can’t, err on the side of readability. I’d rather see a story that’s a killer read, something that gets you attention, than a would-be Godfather 2 meets Citizen Kane masterpiece that never gets made because no one could get through it.

I’ll finish with a quote from one of the great bands of the ’90s. Let’s see if you can name them: “Holllllllllld myyyyyyy hand. Want you to hold my haaaand!”

Genre: Drama/Crime-Thriller
Premise: In 1980 Los Angeles, the intersecting lives of a group of eccentrics spiral toward chaos when a shocking kidnapping forces them down a dark path with only one way out.
About: Writer-director Elijah Bynum technically broke onto the scene with the A24 dud, Hot Summer Nights. But he followed that up with Magazine Dreams, a brilliant spec about a tortured bodybuilder that turned into Hollywood street dust when star Jonathan Majors’ career imploded. This latest movie of his has attracted a very impressive cast. You’ve got Mikey Madison (Anora) playing Jodie. You’ve got Jessica Chastain playing Sharon. You’ve got Chris Pine playing Jack. And you’ve got Don Cheadle and Josh Brolin in there as well.
Writer: Elijah Bynum
Details: 127 pages

Talk about a writer who got screwed.

Elijah wrote an amazing screenplay in Magazine Dreams. It went on to attach one of the fastest-rising actors in Hollywood history and was slated to be an Oscar contender.

And then the Majors situation happened. This probably isn’t the forum for this discussion.  I’m genuinely looking forward to reading this script (I’m writing this before I’ve opened it).  But if you want to understand why people are cynical about Hollywood and its awards machinery, this is the perfect example.

Magazine Dreams was tracking toward Best Actor and Best Picture nominations. Then the industry collectively memory-holed it after the Majors allegations. They did the same with The Birth of a Nation after the Nate Parker controversy in 2016.

Here’s what bothers me: If these films were truly the best.  If these performances were genuinely transcendent.  How can they simply vanish without a trace? I thought the Oscars were about recognizing excellence.

Consider the implications. Magazine Dreams was being positioned as a film people would reference a decade from now. Oscar campaigns were being built. Then… nothing. As if it never existed.

Which raises an uncomfortable question: What other films that we now consider canonical only exist in our cultural memory because a studio decided they were worth the controversy? And conversely, how many genuinely great films have disappeared because someone calculated they weren’t worth the heat?

If we’re supposedly championing “the best,” why do we need the industry’s permission to find it? Why can’t quality speak for itself?

Anyway, it looks like Elijah landed on his feet. This one has a very impressive cast.

It’s 1980. My Darling California introduces us to newswoman Sharon Normandie, who’s married to the Johnny Carson of the time, Jack Normandie. Sharon is a drug addicted mess who hates her husband and her job. Jack, who laces his late night show with lots of religious rhetoric, has driven his wife away by repeatedly cheating on her.

We also meet John Ashley Cotton, a black man who just got out of prison and who used to work on Jack’s show as a janitor. Cotton, always looking to make a buck, blackmails Jack, telling him he’s secretly recorded him having sex with two black women in his office. He wants a payout.

There’s Jodie Taylor, a fresh faced country music star who is a combination of Taylor Swift and Britney Spears. She’s all about purity and waiting for the right one and her music reflects that. But maybe she has some secrets in her past that say otherwise. She has a big performance on Jack’s show.

Then we have dimwitted criminals Roland (older one) and Kent (younger one). They’ve kidnapped a horse (named My Darling California) from Jack. (Man, Jack’s having a bad month). They want half a million dollars to give it back. We eventually learn that Sharon hired them to do this. She’s going to take half the reward so she can leave Jack. And then all of these plot threads and characters weave together for the big finale. And there will be deaths!

I’m admittedly guessing here. But if I had to bet my expensive copy of Final Draft, I would bet that this script was written before Magazine Dreams. Magazine Dreams made the Black List, it got purchased, it got the hottest actor in town attached, and it got made. Elijah then took this out of the drawer, gave it a glow-up, and sent it out.

Why do I think this?

Because it’s very much an early-screenwriter screenplay. These are the kinds of screenplays writers write to prove they’re a good writer. Cause these ensemble stories where you’re cutting back and forth between different plotlines is one of the more common ways to write an “elevated” script.

But what you learn, in retrospect, writing these ensemble pieces, is that it’s hard to keep the engine moving underneath the story. It’s hard enough to keep an engine moving on a single narrative. It becomes three times, four times, five times as hard, doing it here, because you’re constantly taking your foot off the gas when you cut away from a storyline to another one.

Now, if you do it right, that final act has a stronger engine than anything a singular narrative can pull off. Because you’ve set everything up so that, in that act, every time you’re cutting to another storyline, it’s full-throttle hurtling towards its climax.

But that still leaves the first 75% of the screenplay as something the reader has to push through. They have to make more of an effort than usual to follow along. And just hope that you’re a good enough writer to reward them with that big strong 5-storylines-hurtling-forward-at-the-speed-of-light third act.

I bring all this up because the best plan for succeeding as an unknown screenwriter is to write a really compelling single narrative screenplay about a strong character who is pushing towards a big climax. Magazine Dreams was a little slow but its main character helped it achieve that. And scripts like Osculum Inflame. Another great example.

I’M NOT SAYING THEY’RE THE ONLY SCRIPTS THAT WILL LEAD TO SUCCESS. Don’t get your jammies in a bunch. I’m just saying THEY GIVE YOU THE BEST SHOT to succeed when you’re a nobody.

Often, when a screenwriter breaks through using this strategy, they go back to their desk full of old screenplays and pull out that passion project, the one that has a little more “complexity” to it. They’ve got a little buzz so people will read whatever they send out so they send everybody their “I’m a real writer” script.

But here’s my argument. I don’t think these scripts were meant for primetime. They were meant to teach you to become a screenwriter! This type of script teaches screenwriters a valuable lesson – that an ensemble multi-plotline script is really hard to propel forward, especially early on when you’re having to introduce all these characters and their individual storylines. It’s a Setup Carnival but without the fun. Us readers have to muscle through it before the script can gain any sort of plot momentum that hooks us.

So, after writing a script like this, you become much more aware of narrative momentum in screenwriting.

None of this is to say the script isn’t good. I actually found it fairly entertaining. It’s kind of like a softer cozier version of Pulp Fiction. It just didn’t have the teeth that that script had. Pulp Fiction had a good handful of shocking moments. Which meant that any time we waited (such as through the blueberry pancakes dialogue), we were rewarded by something shocking or unexpected that happened in the next scene.

Here, the story is slow. And the rewards are mild. For example, there’s this mystery that Jack has done something horrible in his office that this blackmailer has a videotape of. It turns out he was having sex with two black women. Umm… so what? Maybe that could’ve ended his career in 1980 I guess. But it doesn’t land with the same punch as revealing a gimp, a la Pulp Fiction. I thought, with Jack’s early interactions with children on his show, that his secret sexual exploits were going to be MUCH much worse.

But look, this script is LIGHT YEARS better than yesterday’s script, Behemoth, by Tony Gilroy. This actually shows an understanding of the craft – a writer who knows what he’s doing, even if the creative choices along the way weren’t 10/10.

There’s a great moment in the script where Cotton is telling this long story about working at the late night show and how an actor left some high grade acid in his room and Cotton stole it with the intent of selling it later. But he had to stash it. And after he stashed it, it got lost.

We then cut to Jodie, who’s prepping for her big performance on Jack’s show. And she’s freaking out and the only thing she wants to calm her down – her safe space – is an orange juice. And she keeps asking everybody there for orange juice and they all say they’re going to get it for her but when they look around, they can’t find any orange juice. So they keep lying to her saying that it’s on the way.

We cut back to Cotton, who’s finishing his story. He says how frustrated he is that he lost the acid cause it was worth 5 grand. And the guy he’s talking to asks, “Well where did you stash it?” And he says, “In a bottle of OJ.” And then we cut to Jodie, about to go on stage, and a manager comes up and gives her… a bottle of OJ. And that leads to Jodie taking in 20 doses of acid before going on stage.

The way those two storylines built and then intersected demonstrated a certain poetry that, when this script was working, was great. But there weren’t enough of those moments. There were just enough to keep you invested and that’s it.

Maybe if the script had a character as compelling as Killian Maddox in Magazine Dreams, it could’ve overcome the slower parts of the story. But it didn’t. It had a lot of medium to strong characters. But nobody who truly stood out.

I’m going to say this script is worth reading because there’s plenty of good here. But the format prevents it from ever being able to break out of its screenwriting shell.

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

What I learned: Spoiler (for both today’s and yesterday’s script). I read two scripts in two days, both of them about COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS. These scripts could not be more different. And both have a surprise ending where a main character learns that they fathered a child many years ago. I tell you this to remind you that YOUR IDEAS ARE NEVER AS ORIGINAL AS YOU THINK THEY ARE. You may think you’re writing gold. But if the writer down the street who’s finishing their screenplay just as you’re finishing yours, is coming to the exact same conclusion you are, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough, man. That’s why I never trust first choices in writing, especially on endings. You have to dig deeper to find that reveal that’s truly going to surprise people.