How easy character wins are killing modern screenwriting

So I was watching 90 Day Fiancé the other day. For those who don’t know the premise, this is a reality show where people from different countries meet online, form a relationship, then move to the other person’s country to be with them.

In this particular season, one of the cast members was a woman in her late 20s who was a homebody. She meets this guy in England, they engage with each other for a year online, and she decides to upend her whole life, along with her career, to go live with him in the English countryside.

Around Episode 3 is when she finally gets to England. They meet at the airport, go back to his home, put all her stuff away, and prepare for the long “happily ever after” journey they’re about to enjoy together.

Except that three days later, the girl decides that she was wrong. Once she met the guy in actuality, there wasn’t any chemistry there. So she told him she was moving out, stayed in a hotel for a few days, then flew back home.

Great story right before Valentine’s Day, huh!!

There’s a purpose to me telling you this, I promise. I’ll explain what that is in a minute.

As I continue to read screenplays, read pilots, watch movies, and watch TV shows, there’s an issue with the large majority of these stories in these different mediums that is causing people to tune out. Or at least be less excited about what’s out there.

And that is: the lack of uncertainty in today’s stories.

I’m not going to pretend like the structure of storytelling isn’t antithetical to creating doubt.  When we watch Die Hard, we know that there’s going to be a confrontation between John and Hans at the end. We know he’s going to save his wife. We know he’s going to save everybody. All of that is working against the creation of doubt within the story.

But that’s where the real screenwriters step up. They know that you know what’s coming. And yet they still create scenarios that instill doubt in you. It’s magical stuff when you think about it. You know how this will end yet you’re still unsure the hero can pull it off. That’s because writers, back in the day, worked their asses off at constructing scenarios in a fashion where you were always unsure if or how the hero was going to overcome them.

These days, it doesn’t even feel like writers are pretending anymore. It’s as if they’re saying, “We know that you know what’s coming next. So why do this song and dance where I try and deny it? Let’s give you exactly what you think is going to happen.”

The problem is, that’s exactly what’s made so many shows and movies so boring. Is that writers aren’t trying to create doubt about what’s going to happen next. In their scripts, in their acts, in their scenes, in the very next moment.

Without doubt, there is no anxiety in the audience’s brain. There is no worry. There is only a calm assured demeanor. And if the audience is calm and assured for any length of time, they grow bored and give up on the story.

The reason I brought up a reality show on a screenwriting website was not to troll you. It was to point out that an episode of 90 Fcuking Day Fiance is able to create more doubt in its narrative than the last 10 things out of Hollywood I watched combined.

Believe me, it was not in the producers’ plans for that woman to get to England and immediately decide she was leaving. They put a ton of money into a months’ long production schedule that was there to follow that relationship. And then it’s just… over. The production didn’t expect it. The boyfriend didn’t expect it. We didn’t expect it.

And once that happens in a story, even on reality TV, we’re suddenly awake. Because now anything can happen. That’s the whole engine of storytelling. The unknown. The instability. The risk. We keep watching to find out what happens next. If we already know, there’s no tension. No anxiety. No urgency. Just inevitability. And inevitability is death on screen.

But there’s a more sinister component to all this. A lot of writers are manufacturing doubt. But it’s Milli Vanilli doubt. It’s lip syncing. The hero “might” fail, except we know they won’t. The relationship “might” fall apart, except we know it won’t. It’s the appearance of instability without the conviction that it’s really going to happen. And audiences can smell that.

Let’s stop speaking theoretically and give you the best recent example of doubt I’ve seen. Granted, this isn’t a 10 out of 10 execution of doubt. But it’s stronger than what most shows are giving us, that’s for sure.

In the latest Game of Thrones show, Knight of The Seven Kingdoms, the main character, Dunk, a large oaf of a young man, is headed to Ashford Meadow to compete in a knights skills competition in hopes of winning and becoming an official knight of the kingdom.

Note what the goal is here: Win the tournament.

The character goal is the beginning of the process by which the writer either creates certainty or uncertainty. I was fully expecting certainty – the opposite of doubt. In which case, I would’ve probably turned the series off.

But instead, the writers do something interesting. Dunk goes to the tournament head and asks for instatement into the tournament. And the head says no. You can’t prove you’re a real knight so I can’t let you into the competition. This is the first step towards creating doubt. Cause now we’re thinking, “Okay, well, how is he going to get in the tournament then?”

Dunk then goes to one of the wily but powerful people in town to try and get into the tournament through the back door. He parties all night with the guy. But the guy tells him, “No, there’s nothing I can do for you.”

Now my doubt is fully activated. We’re already into episode 2. Forget about winning the tournament. We can’t even get into the tournament! Those are the seeds that create doubt within the reader. And now we’re genuinely wondering how the character is going to achieve their goal.

But that’s not even the best thing about creating doubt. When you create doubt, you make your hero have to work harder. You make them have to be more clever. You make them have to outthink everybody else. And it’s when your character does this that we truly start to like them.

Think about it. Why would we like somebody who has everything handed to them? We like characters who must overcome obstacle after obstacle – GENUINE OBSTACLES, NOT LIP-SYCHED ONES – because that means they’ve EARNED our admiration.

And I just gave you the secret sauce to creating doubt : OBSTACLES. You want to put obstacles in front of your hero. The bigger those obstacles are, the better. The more formidable those obstacles are, the better. The more GENUINE those obstacles are, the better.

So why is this so prevalent? How has doubt been quietly erased from dramatic writing?

Because it’s easier.

The harder you make things for your hero, the harder you make things for yourself, the writer. If you send a crew into a bank robbery, it’s much easier to post one sleepy security guard at the door than five former black ops soldiers guarding the vault. So you go with the crappy guard. The scene writes itself. You might even finish it in an hour.

But figuring out how your team outsmarts trained killers? That’s going to cost you days. You’ll hit walls. You’ll have to rethink the plan. You’ll have to earn the outcome. And that’s exactly why it works. The struggle on your end translates into struggle on the page.

So moving forward, hunt for doubt in your screenplays. Make the goal feel impossible. Then make it worse. And worse again. Not cosmetic obstacles. Not limp setbacks. Real ones. The kind that, if you were in that position, you genuinely wouldn’t know what to do.

Because if you don’t know what happens next, the reader definitely won’t.

That’s doubt.

Genre: Erotic Thriller
Premise: A couples therapist is drawn into a dangerous triangle of lust, lies and manipulation when she begins an affair with a stranger—who turns out to be the husband of her new client.
About: This script was a spec script that was purchased by New Regency. The writers, Erika Vázquez & Siena Butterfield, wrote on the Netflix hit, Wednesday.
Writers: Erika Vázquez & Siena Butterfield
Details: 110 pages

Kendrick for Pau?

Today’s script actually covers a lot of great screenwriting topics. It’s packed with them! So let’s jump into it!

40-something Dr. Paulina Cuevas Strom is just minding her business as the great couples therapist she is when, one night, at a party, she’s propositioned by a sexy man with a wedding ring named Oliver. She almost has sex with him in the bathroom but thinks better of it.

Paulina (Pau), can’t stop thinking about Oliver though. It doesn’t help that her marriage with the weak and wimpy Anders contains a lot of boring sex. So one day, she texts Oliver back, meets him at a hotel, and they start banging.

Meanwhile, Pau is trying to help a fairly new patient, Mare, fit in better at work. Mare is tall and beautiful and looks like a model. But she’s also a bit crazy and controlling, which is what they’re working on.

Well, that work gets a bit tougher when Mare shows up to her session one day with her husband, Oliver. Pau tries not to freak out and, after that session, Oliver sneaks back in to apologize. He didn’t know. And then they have sex again.

Pau knows what she’s doing is bad but can’t quit this sexy guy! She can’t get away with it forever though (spoilers) and, one day, Mare comes into their session telling Pau she knows she’s sleeping with her husband. But it gets worse. It turns out, Mare orchestrated all this from the beginning. She’s been controlling her helpless husband, who does whatever she wants.

Pau knows to get the fuck out of the situation now. But it may be too late. The State Licensing Board gets a complaint about Pau’s practice and now she considers this all-out war. But war with Mare is not a war you want to be in. Pau may be way in over her head.

For some weird reason, Hollywood keeps forgetting that sex sells. I mean, that phrase (Sex Sells) was born in this town. So I don’t know why they go through these giant time chunks where they completely forget how thirsty people are. Especially women.

I know a female friend who STILL TALKS ABOUT the film, Unfaithful, to this day cause of the sex scenes. And if you’ve seen that movie, you know that they really don’t show that much. That’s the thing with this erotic-romance genre. It’s more about the lead-up to the sexual acts than the acts themselves.

This is exactly why Wuthering Heights is being hyped up. And “Fixation” wants to be the next movie in this very lucrative genre space.

The first thing I want to talk about when it comes to Fixation is AMPLIFYING CONFLICT.

You want conflict in every movie you write. But there are levels to conflict. And good writers look for ways to amplify conflict so it’s more powerful.

For example, if you’re covering infidelity, like this script is, you could write about a woman being unfaithful and that’s it. Which is, ironically, the plot to Unfaithful. But why not “plus it up?” You achieve this by amplifying conflict.

So, instead of just having a man and a woman cheating on their partners, why not make it so a therapist is unknowingly sleeping with the husband of one of her patients? Notice how that amplifies the conflict in two ways. She’s betraying the trust of someone paying her to be the most trustworthy person in their life. And she’s also risking her career.

Now, getting caught isn’t just about two people cheating. It’s about a lot more. Which means getting caught has bigger consequences, which is how you raise the stakes.

In order to make this sort of setup work, though, you have to solidify a couple of things. The bond between Pau and Mare has to be super close. Mare needs to trust her with her life. And Pau’s self-identity has to be built around how professional she is. These two requirements were not met. But they would’ve amplified the conflict even more had they been.

One of the reasons I love therapy-focused scripts is because they’re a cheat code for character development. Creating characters who are deep and who the reader feels like they know, is one of the harder things to do in screenwriting.

Therapy scripts allow you to do this easily. Cause you can ask characters very direct questions about what’s going on in their head. “Why do you feel like you need to control everything?” The answer to that question is going to tell us a lot about Mare. But if Mare was in a non-therapy screenplay, asking a question like that feels on-the-nose.

Another thing you might notice about this script is that there’s no goal. The main character isn’t trying to achieve some primary objective. So then you might ask, “Well, what’s the engine powering the story then?”

In a script like this, the engine is that we know the train is going to crash at some point and readers will always keep reading until the crash. It’s a classic story engine and it works very well. It works here too. I wanted to see what happened when this tightrope walk came tumbling down.

Another thing the script executes well is its midpoint. You have to make a decision with a script like this whether you’re going to take the train all the way to the third act or if you’re going to take it to the midpoint.

If you’re going to take it to the third act, it has to be a really compelling situation. And, to be honest, I think this script had enough juice to take its infidelity storyline to the third act. But they opted to come clean with the cheating at the midpoint. And this is usually what you want to do because it creates an amazing midpoint scene and it changes the nature of the story going forward so that the second half feels different from the first half.

So, here, Mare storms into Pau’s office, says she knows she’s sleeping with her husband and they fight it out. The scene takes some unexpected turns and becomes what will be the most talked about scene in the movie. So that’s good!

However, if you’re going to end your movie’s hook at the midpoint, you need to have a stellar plan for what’s going to happen in the second half of the movie. And this is where Fixation stumbles.

It’s not a catastrophic stumble. But here’s the problem. Everything up to the midpoint was authentic. You could imagine something like this happening in real life. After the midpoint, the writers fell victim to what I call “the movie-logic seduction.”

This is when a script quietly stops behaving like humans would… and starts behaving like a movie that knows it’s a movie. For example, Pau and Anders get away for a remote vacation (so Pau can escape the madness). And then, the next day, Mare and Oliver show up, saying they just happened to be in the neighborhood.

That’s not happening in real life.

And I’m not saying you can’t get away with this sometimes. But something about it feels sloppy, and most of your audience is going to feel that too. Worse, that kind of sloppiness is usually a warning sign. The Sloppy Monster almost never shows up alone. It brings friends.  Which is exactly what happens here. By the end, the movie doesn’t even make sense.

Spoilers ahead. The two women are easily the worst people in the story. They are the ones doing all the terrible things. And yet Oliver and Anders are the ones who get punished, with Oliver turned into a handy scapegoat so everyone else can emotionally move on, consequences optional.

Despite that, the script was still good overall and a great example of exploiting marketing blind spots in Hollywood, which occasionally happen. Although I don’t know how you can forget that sex sells. I mean, duh.

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

What I learned: In addition to all the other great screenwriting tips in this script, another is dramatic irony. This is a great dramatic irony situation. Pau is doing marriage counseling therapy sessions with a couple while sleeping with the husband. Every word she utters in these sessions has dual meanings. That creates great subtext which, in turn, leads to compelling scenes.

Best pitch gets a script review next week!

While I’m tempted to spend 1500 words chastising Jon Favreau and Disney for spending 10 million dollars on the most poorly produced trailer in the history of Star Wars (and potentially cinema)…

WE’RE HERE TO BE POSITIVE TODAY!

Next week, I want to focus on the query letter. It’s a little talked-about component of screenwriting but an insanely important one. I’ve probably received more query e-mails than anyone else in Hollywood so I consider myself somewhat of an expert on what makes a good one.

I’ll get into the secret sauce of a good query letter next Thursday. But, the skinny of it is this. Most writers overdo it. And, in overdoing it, they expose their writing weaknesses. What you need to remember is that the star of your query is your logline. That’s the only thing that the person receiving your query really cares about. So, you want to make sure that’s featured.

This is how this is going to work.

You’re going to pretend I’m a producer at Scriptshadow Productions. And you’re going to pitch me a REAL SCREENPLAY. That’s it. And whoever has the best query, I will review their script next week.

A couple of caveats to this. Don’t pitch me your Blood & Ink screenplay. We’re saving those scripts for the official contest. But you can pitch me any other script.  Also, include an attachment of your screenplay.  In a real query, you wouldn’t do this.  You would wait for them to request your script.  But since I’m going to review the winner on the site, I need the script.

Send all query e-mails to carsonreeves3@gmail.com. You have all the way until Sunday at NOON PACIFIC TIME to query me.  You can only send one query.

If you’re not interested in putting your script out there for the world to see but you’d still like to know how to write a good query letter, I offer a query consultation service. It’s 60 bucks and includes three follow-up e-mails, allowing us to make a couple of extra tweaks beyond my initial fixes. If you’re interested in that, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com.

Can’t wait to see what you guys have got!

$25 logline consults are open. And for this weekend only, I’m bringing back my 5 loglines for $100 deal. If you’ve got a handful of movie ideas and want an honest take on how they stack up against the 30,000 concepts I’ve been pitched, this is the perfect time. Tighten your premise, find the strongest idea, and make sure you’re leading with your best shot. Email me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com to get started.

If you’re anything like me, when you walk into a movie theater these days, you’re walking with your head on a swivel. The badness of the movies Hollywood has been dumping on us can come at you from any angle.

Which led me to this improbable question: Am I going to see a movie in the theater this year?

I was genuinely not sure! So I took a trip down Firstshowing’s movie release list to see if I could find anything that looked good enough that I would actually go and pay for it.

Full disclosure, going through lists these days gives me anxiety. I already go down the Black List and get depressed that there aren’t any good scripts to read. If movies are also going to steal my excitement, what do I have left? Don’t get me wrong. 90 Day Fiancé and its 10,000 spin-off iterations are entertaining. But the entirety of my viewing pleasure cannot be placed on Geno and Jasmine.

Well, I’m happy to report that there are QUITE A FEW MOVIES I deem “movie theater worthy.” It actually shocked me how many there were. Cause I was expecting, if there were any, it would be 1 or 2.  But there’s more.  Many more.

So, let’s go through them, shall we?

February 13 – Wuthering Heights

Okay, I’m starting off with one that I won’t see. But the reason I’m including the film is because social media is obsessed with it. Which tells me this movie is one of the few this year that has a shot at breaking out into pop culture, a rarity in 2026. Look, I thought Emerald Fennel’s Promising Young Woman was a great script and an even better movie. But I’m not on board with the projects she’s been picking since. I actually know nothing about this book other than it’s a “classic.” But, from the outside, it seems to me like its only value here is to be able to create sex scenes between Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. That might get some people’s rocks off. It doesn’t get mine. I will only see this movie if people tell me it’s a masterpiece.

March 20 – Project Hail Mary

We’ve got two Star Wars connections here. Lord & Miller, who infamously got fired from “Solo.” And Ryan Gosling, who’s going to be in the next Star Wars film. I read the book. It was great until the alien showed up. But after seeing the trailer, it looks like these extremely talented directors figured out the alien. Lord & Miller are really really good at finding that perfect comedic balance for their stories. They never get too wacky. And they never go with that boring mainstream type humor. They’re still able to convey their voice. Which I guess Kathleen Kennedy never got. Project Hail Mary feels like the perfect big-budget movie to kick off the early summer season. It just looks fun and it also looks good!

May 22 – The Mandalorian & Grogu

Ewan McGregor once famously said, ‘It’d take a bigger man than me to turn down playing Obi-Wan Kenobi.’  I’m going to echo that sentiment.  It’d take a bigger man than me to not see a Star Wars movie in the theater.  I may have major concerns about the franchise but Jon Favreau is going to at least put something entertaining onscreen. Now, will it be able to withstand its ruler-high stakes? No. This is the problem Star Wars has been dealing with ever since it’s tried to expand its universe. A huge reason why the original movies were so successful was because the stakes were enormous. And Star Wars hasn’t been able to replicate that in any of its films or movies, mainly because it keeps placing them inside timelines that make it impossible to bring the stakes up as high as the original trilogy. So that’s going to be a challenge for Favreau for sure. With that said, I expect this movie to be a cameo machine. I just think every awesome Star Wars character who’s ever been in the franchise is going to make a cameo and I don’t want to miss it! So count me in for Mandalorian & Grogu.

June 12 – Disclosure Day

You guys know how obsessed I am with aliens and UFOs. How obsessed are we talking? I went to AI the other day and I asked it why there wasn’t a bigger public reckoning after The Phoenix Lights back in the 90s (an event where thousands of people in Phoenix saw a giant ship pass over the city). And it came back at me saying there wasn’t really any evidence. Only speculation. There’s no actual proof. So I followed up by asking it, “If the government wanted to cover up an event like The Phoenix Lights, what would it do?” And AI listed the 5 main things it would do. Which, coincidentally, were exactly what happened! I pointed this out to AI and told it to be better.  Carson = 1.  AI = 0.  The point is, we need disclosure to happen and I sense that Spielberg, who we know brings in the best experts in the world when it comes to this stuff (see: Close Encounters of the Third Kind) brought in people who really really know what’s going on. In that way, his movie is potentially a pseudo-documentary. I’m here for it. I admit that the movie itself looks lacking. But if I learn some stuff about aliens I didn’t previously know, it’s worth it.

June 19 – The Death of Robin Hood

This is another movie I will not be seeing. But I know a lot of you are looking forward to it. I actually get quite a few e-mails from people who don’t know what Scriptshadow is, saying they found my review of the script through a Google search and they want to read it. I would not advise that. The script is really awful, guys. Like such an enormous letdown. It starts strong, which is why it’s so disappointing what comes after. But I’m telling you, if you get your hopes up for this, you will be devastated by how the script completely falls apart after the first act.

June 19 – Toy Story 5

Woody and Buzz are one of the most iconic duos ever. They’re magic together. And Pixar’s got a unique thing on their hands in that this is an animation and not real life. For that reason, they can extend this duo’s life out longer than it would have lasted had this been a live action movie. Toy Story is an example of the power of character. It’s something I think a lot about these days. As AI becomes more of a threat, the one area where it’s clueless is creating a great character from scratch. It can put Luke Skywalker’s face in these mini Star Wars AI adventures and make us feel something. But that’s built off the shoulders of writers from 50 years ago. And it’s literally the only thing that makes the short work. Creating lovable interesting emotionally-affecting characters requires a human calling. And that’s why I will see this movie. Cause not only are Woody and Buzz great characters. But Toy Story has another dozen strong characters as well. And plus there hasn’t been a bad Toy Story movie. Which is incredible. What other franchise can say that?

June 26 – Supergirl

Oh boy. Okay, I admit that I’m not seeing this because the movie looks good. I’m seeing it for two other reasons. One, I like Milly Alcock. And two, this movie has a lot of pressure on it in regards to James Gunn’s future with DC. Superman did okay. This will be his second film (this time as producer). And I’m curious what we’re going to get. I want it to work. The idea of a “super person” who’s a complete mess in their personal life is a strong place to start from for a character. Which, no doubt, is exactly why Gunn fast-tracked the film. I’ve said it before on the site. One of the cheat codes for creating interesting characters is to create someone who is at extreme odds with something within themselves. A character struggling to fix themselves also being tossed into a scenario where they must save others? You’ve got a movie there. This is exactly what Hancock did. And that was a great premise as well. So, we’ll see.

July 17 – Cut Off

This one may become the sleeper hit of the summer. It’s the only major studio comedy. And the premise is comedic gold: “Two wealthy siblings who are suddenly cut off from their parents’ financial support, are forced to navigate adult life and financial independence for the first time.” The best comedy tends to be fish-out-of-water scenarios. And this is one nobody else has thought of until now, for some reason. It’s going to be so fun watching Jonah Hill and Kristin Wiig attempt to operate in a completely foreign world. I always say that good comedy concepts make you immediately start imagining hilarious scenes. Just putting these two in a supermarket for the first time is going to be hilarious. Learning what items actually cost. I have high hopes for this one.

July 17 – The Odyssey

Looks like I’ll have a double feature this weekend! Ah yes, how can you say no to Christopher Nolan and his most ambitious movie ever? Am I an Odyssey fan? No. Kids back in 8th grade might have even called me an Odyssey-hater. But this is basically Christopher Nolan doing his version of Clash of the Titans, and that’s enough for me. I’m certainly more interested in this than I was Oppenheimer. Plus, you gotta respect a guy who has absolutely no hobbies, no interests, and no friends, outside of moviemaking. Dude just wants to leave a legacy. This is an Opening Day watch.

July 31 – Spider-Man Brand New Day

One of the best things that the Spider-Man producers lucked into was that Tom Holland will look like he’s 18 until he’s 58. They can just keep popping these movies out of the oven forever. And I got no issues with it at all. I love these films. I was just thinking about this the other day. The two most reliable superhero franchises are Spider-Man and Batman. Which is so strange because one is about this brooding intense depressed dude. And the other is about this happy swingy fun guy. They’re polar opposites. — Now, what makes this newest Spider-Man more of a curiosity than the others is that Tom Holland has more control now. He signed a new contract where that was part of the contract. He demanded that they write his favorite Spider-Man villain into the story (The Punisher). You also have a new director on the franchise (Destin Daniel Cretton). Let’s see if these new elements get in the way of what, otherwise, has been a blueprint for how to create the perfect superhero franchise.

Aug 14 – Flowervale Street

Okay, not many people know about this one. Flowervale Street is the new film by David Robert Mitchell, the guy who did It Follows. It’s a 1980s set sci-fi thriller about a suburban family (Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor) who notice bizarre events in their neighborhood, leading them and their neighbors to be transported to the prehistoric era, where they must survive against dinosaurs. What’s also interesting about this film is that it’s a Bad Robot movie. So JJ Abrams is involved. At this point, it’s not clear to me if this is going to be Mitchell doing the low-budget version of a giant adventure, which is what he seems to like.  Or going big. Because this is a very big idea. I’d say this one is in the top 5 of movies I’m looking forward to.

October 2 – Digger

This is going to be the big artsy film of the year. It’s got Alejandro G. Iñárritu (The Revenant, Birdman) directing and it’s got Tom Cruise starring. The only current premise available is: The most powerful man in the world embarks on a frantic mission to prove that he’s humanity’s savior. And it’s listed as a black comedy. So I’m guessing that it’s going to be in the “Birdman” tone. Iñárritu can definitely get too artsy for my taste. But Cruise is really good at understanding what the mainstream audience member wants. So I’m hoping that he’s able to rein Iñárritu in a little. Either way, it’s going to be an interesting film for sure.

November 13 – The Great Beyond

Guess who’s baaaaaaaaack. JJ Abrammmmms. Mr. Mystery Box himself. The haterz are out in full force. But let me counter that hate by offering you two of the hottest actors in the business right now: Glen Powell and Jenna Ortega. All we know about the plot is that it follows a young couple struggling to survive against a supernatural entity. And that’s the way JJ wants it. We know he hates people already knowing the plots to his movies. This man’s writing was built on a very specific writing tool: the element of surprise. Look, if I’m being 100 with you guys, I think JJ’s lost his fastball. And I think that Glen Powell may be fool’s gold. And I know that Jenna Ortega is full of herself. So, I’m not convinced the elements are going to come together to make a beautiful harmonic symphony. But what’s cool about this movie is that it’s an original idea. Whenever I see original ideas, I think, “This means you could’ve written a spec script that got purchased and made into this movie.” So, it’s great news for writers.

December 18 – Avengers Doomsday

What does an 800 million dollar movie look like? For the first time ever, we’re going to find out. How can you not go watch a movie whose success or failure is going to determine the next decade in Hollywood? “Doomsday” has a Mandalorian problem. It’s coming into the theater limping rather than sprinting. There aren’t even any Marvel movies coming out this year to build up hype for it. It looks like Spider-Man is going to do its own thing. Avengers Doomsday reminds me, almost exactly, of what happened with Rise of Skywalker. They both sensed the fans becoming restless. They both hired the directors that built the franchise (JJ for Star Wars, Russos for Marvel). They both brought beloved dead characters back (Solo and The Emperor for Star Wars, Downey Jr. for Doomsday). It felt desperate then and it feels desperate now. But look, I’m rooting for the Russos to blow my socks off. I want this movie to be great. Especially because the next Marvel movie has a great hook (a gladiator ring of superheroes fighting each other). But if this bombs, we won’t even care about that. The marketing for this movie so far has been awful. Get on your P’s and Q’s Marvel! Let’s hope Doomsday doesn’t live up to its name at the box office.

Seven meets Weapons meets Pluribus?

Genre: Serial Killer/Sci-Fi
Premise: An LA detective begins to suspect that a series of murders and suicides is tied to a group that’s figured out how to jump into another person’s body.
About: This spec sold to BoulderLight Pictures, the coolest hippest production company in town. They’re the Zach Cregger adjacent outfit. They produced both Barbarian and one of my favorite movies from last year, Companion. The buzzy sci-fi tale comes from someone who worked with the buzzy sci-fi guru himself, J.J. Abrams.
Writer: Isaac Louis García
Details: 110 pages

Chris Pine for Detective Harry?

I come across these “switching through a lot of bodies” concepts a couple of times a year. And, in every third script or so, the idea is mixed in with a serial killer premise. So I’m not unfamiliar with this setup. However, today’s writer reminds us that if no one has cracked a cool idea yet, why not take another shot at it and crack it yourself?

LA detective Harry Roth is barely keeping his head above water. A young girl has vanished without a trace. Her last known contact was an LA sleazeball named Melvin Ray, who soon after disappears himself. Digging deeper, Harry uncovers a chain of unsettling connections: Melvin was involved with a woman named Claire Kim, who later takes her own life. Claire, in turn, had ties to a UCLA scientist, Jonathan Laib. He also ends up dead by apparent suicide.

Now Harry’s attention has turned to Laib’s colleague, Genevieve Black. And with every new link in the chain, the pattern becomes harder to ignore.

Harry begins to suspect something impossible. He believes someone is transferring their consciousness from body to body. The real challenge isn’t just solving the case, but convincing his no-nonsense boss, Captain James Rhee, that any of this is real. Rhee is deeply skeptical, but even he can’t deny that the evidence points to something abnormal. Reluctantly, he gives Harry room to keep digging.

All of this unfolds against the backdrop of Harry’s strained home life. He’s married to Celine, whose adult daughter Lucy still lives with them. Lucy makes money through strange internet side hustles, including selling abstract audio recordings to an OnlyFans-like audience. She resents Harry for inserting himself into her family and makes sure he feels unwelcome at every turn.

Eventually, Harry traces the mystery to a man named Dreux, who once worked for a reclusive scientist named Isaac Gamin Astor. Astor developed a technology based on an auditory trigger that allows a person’s consciousness to jump into another body. At first, the two exploit the invention in simple ways. They hop bodies, empty bank accounts, then move on.

But Astor’s ambitions have grown far more extreme. He envisions a world where identity itself dissolves. Where everyone becomes everyone else.

Harry has no idea how close he is to the truth until his pursuit goes disastrously wrong. His own body is hijacked, and he wakes up trapped inside a little girl’s body. With time running out, Harry must find a way back and stop Astor before the technology is unleashed on the world. Whether he can pull it off… remains to be seen.

I’ve been on the lookout for a supernatural “Seven” for a long time. This script is it.

How did that movie separate itself?

What made Seven stand out wasn’t the plot mechanics. It was the detail. The lived-in quality of the world. The way the rain felt like it had a personality of its own. The script lingered in places most screenwriters would rush past without a second thought.

There were moments that seemed insignificant on paper but carried real weight because of how specifically they were rendered. A cop alone in his office. Sitting. Thinking. Not advancing the plot. Just existing. Those pauses gave the story texture. They made the world feel inhabited rather than assembled.

It felt like the kind of script that could only come from someone with time. A writer who wasn’t under contract, wasn’t racing a deadline, and didn’t feel pressure to be efficient on every page. Someone willing to let scenes breathe, to follow their curiosity, to stay with a moment a little longer than necessary.

That’s one of the underrated advantages of being a nobody screenwriter with zero deadlines. You can let your mind wander and put it on the page. And when you do, the script starts to feel less like a delivery system for plot and more like a place you can actually live in. That’s what separates something like Seven from the average script.

The character of Lucy is a good example of that same approach in Cut Outs. She’s an adult still living in her mother’s house, burrowed away in a dark, cluttered bedroom, perpetually online. Her world is narrow but deep. She’s gone far into the strange, specific corners of internet life, the kind of depths you only reach when you spend an enormous amount of time doing nothing else.

That level of specificity feels observed. It’s the sort of detail that comes from lingering on a character long enough to understand how they actually live, not just what role they serve in the story. Those small, slightly uncomfortable details help a script stand out.

Or, to put it in plain speak: This writer actually put in real effort.

Most writers put in 60-70% effort. The good ones will get to 80%. The great ones are between 90 and 100. Just like great athletes who leave it all on the field, great writers leave it all on the page. If you asked them to improve anything, they’d say, “I can’t. This is the best I can do.” That’s the feeling I got when I read this script.

I want to draw attention to a very brief moment early on where, once I read it, I knew this would be the first “worth the read” or better script on the site in a long time. Harry’s talking to Captain Rhee. He’s describing the habits of Claire who, according to her boyfriend, began acting strange all of a sudden. He says he noticed a change in her habits. She had been a bubbly, young, creative type. A late riser. Medicated. A little slovenly. But open, always open with him. Then suddenly she starts getting up at the crack of dawn and leaving the apartment before he’s awake.

This is the exchange that follows. Rhee asks, “What kind of meds she on?” Harry replies, “It’s in the dossier. Nothing relevant.” Rhee asks, “She change her medication at all?” Harry says, “I don’t know.” Rhee responds, “Go on.”

99.9% of readers will breeze right past this. But to me, it signals a writer who’s stronger than most. Here’s why. Most writers treat a screenplay as a stack of pages they need to fill in order to get their story down. When you think that way, you only focus on your objective as the writer. You aren’t thinking about the characters as living people.

The scene becomes: what do I need to accomplish here to move the story forward? And once you start thinking like that, the scene loses life. You cannot write real life if you are only trying to achieve your own objectives. Real life is full of friction. Of interruptions. Of resistance. Of people pushing back when you least expect it.

A good screenwriter understands that Rhee is in this scene too. And if you put another character in a scene, they are not there to be decorative. They have their own goals. Their own pressures. Their own motivations. Rhee’s job is to evaluate whether this theory deserves police resources in a city that barely has enough to go around. Letting Harry run with a hunch means pulling him away from some other problem that also needs attention.

Most writers would have had Rhee go silent after Harry lays out the theory. To them, the exposition about Claire is the whole point. Letting Rhee talk gets in the way of that. So they might have instead had him say, “Go on,” or “I see.”  When Rhee asks what kind of medication she was on, and then follows it with, did she change it at all, that tiny moment reveals a writer who is paying attention to how people actually think and respond.  As someone who reads a ton of scripts, I can promise you, that’s rare.

And that commitment to detail is present throughout the entire screenplay. And it takes what’s already a fun twisty journey into that “Seven”-type universe where LA becomes its own character. I think that’s when you know a writer is really cooking. He understands that the very environment itself is its own character.

So, does it get an “impressive?” Almost! A movie that’s this twisty and weird needs to land the plane. And we do land (and to the writer’s credit, it doesn’t go exactly how you think it will). But it’s a bumpy enough landing that I can’t give it a top grade. I think it’s a really good script though and definitely one of the best scripts I’ve reviewed on the site in a while!

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

What I Learned: One of the simplest ways to add real energy to a dialogue scene is to let another character push back. That tiny bit of resistance creates imbalance, and imbalance is what makes a scene feel alive. If one character is talking about a trip to the store, put someone else in the room who says, “You never go to that store.” The first character fires back, “Okay, well, I went there yesterday.” Nothing major changes. No new plot information is revealed. But the scene suddenly has texture. Any time you let a character talk uninterrupted, the dialogue starts to feel fake. Because, in real life, people don’t just rant on for ages. There’s a give and take. There’s pushback. There’s messiness.