type='html'>Genre: Action
Logline (2nd place): Hired by Homeland Security to envision terrorist attack scenarios, a skillful ex-soldier turned novelist must battle anarchists when they hijack his nightmare plot to destroy New York.
About: Welcome to the first annual “First Ten Pages Week.” What I did was have readers send in loglines then vote on their favorites. The top five loglines, then, would get their first 10 pages read this week. With any of the five reviews, if the comments are positive enough, I’ll review them in full on a future Amateur Friday. But the reason I'm excited about this week is because I get to do something I rarely get a chance to do in reviews - and that's look at the specific aspects of screenwriting. Enjoy!
Writers: Stephen Hoover & Mike Donald

Full disclosure. I've given notes on this script.

I just want to say that Stephen and Mike are two of the nicest and coolest guys you’ll ever meet or trade e-mails with. They really care about screenwriting and really want to get better. This is such a tough business and sometimes all you have to get you through the day is optimism – and these two have it in spades. I just love their attitude and their approach to the craft. But does that translate into a great first 10 pages?? Let’s find out.

The first 10 pages of The Fourth Horseman follow Nathan Scorer, an ex-soldier, as he fights for his life on top of the Hoover Dam against an unknown group of terrorists who really want him dead. Before we can find out his fate, however, we flash back 48 hours earlier to see Nathan, who we realize is retired from his soldier days, hawking a novel at a local book fair about his battle stories. Afterwards, he’s recruited by a mysterious man who says he’s part of an organization that predicts terrorism scenarios, and he wants Nathan to join them. We also end up meeting the evil Seth Silver, who begins putting in place a plan to attack New York City.

Contrary to yesterday's script, this one starts out strong. Check out the first sentence (italics are mine):

IN BLACK

The SOUNDS of high speed burst satellite transmissions. Machine code warbling -- bleeding into police radio chatter.

From the very first line, I’m HEARING a movie. Not only is it well-written, but it evokes a feeling in you. You're already transported into the theater. This is followed by:

STARS glitter against the black ink of space as the police transmissions build, become more urgent.

A picture is being painted in front of me. We have prose, but not prose that draws attention to itself. It’s prose with a purpose - to elicit an image juxtaposed with sound. This is good writing. I’m into it.

Intrigue builds. Satellite busted. Astronauts dead. At this point, I can't wait to see what this is all about. We’ll get to the rest of the pages in a second. But if you're talking about capturing a reader's attention within the first scene, this is a textbook example of how to do so.

The first roadblock – for me at least - is hit in the next scene though. I don't like names in action movies that are so obviously action movie names. Nathan “Scorer” feels like one of those names. It also looks and sounds weird. Say “Scorer” out loud. It doesn’t come off the tongue easily. I know this is nitpicky but nitpicky is what this week’s about. These are the kinds of things readers think about when they’re reading your script.

However, that’s okay, because then we’re brought into a really cool action sequence on the top of the Hoover Dam. There was a moment I loved in particular, where Nathan grabbed a vehicle hood from a car and used it as a shield to defend against the onslaught of bullets. Remember how yesterday I said not to go with obvious choices. This was a non-obvious choice to me. I’d never seen it before.

Unfortunately, we then CUT BACK 48 hours. We’ve discussed the crazy opening flashforward device ad nauseum on this site. It didn’t kill my interest here. But it was a hiccup, a moment that took me out of the story. You have to understand that I see this SOOOOO often in screenplays that I can’t help but groan a little whenever it happens, yet again.

But the big moment that gave me pause in these pages was when Nathan started talking. I don’t know what it was, but something felt off. We had all this great action and great imagery, and then when I expect my Bruce Willis-like action star to appear, I instead get something closer to Chris Tucker. There’s this jokey vibe to the way he addresses the audience at the book fair (“So now they’re really paying attention, Putty Nose is babbling some shit, eyes bugging out and I’m swinging it round my head with one arm and aiming the flare gun at them with the other...”). I like my action stars cool and collected, not goofy and awkward.

This is followed by the tried-and-true joke of us swiveling around Nathan after his big story only to see a single child standing in the audience eating his ice cream. At this point, all the seriousness I was hoping for from this movie has been zapped. This is starting to feel a lot more like an action-comedy than an action movie, which is not something I wanted. So I’m already starting to retreat from the material.

This is confirmed by lines like, “Jesus! Who are you, Dracula?" And when Nathan is asked why he worked for contractors instead of the government, he replies, “They had more stylish uniforms." Not only is that a goofy line but it's a line I know I've heard in three or four action-comedies before.

Later we cut to Nathan playing a skater video game. Now we've hit an official screenwriting problem. I don’t know who my main character is. So far I've seen this battle-hardened warrior taking on a dozen men with guns on top of the Hoover Dam, a goofy wisecracking storyteller professor type who’s looking for laughs, and now a man-child who spends his off time playing video games. When I put those three things together, I have absolutely no idea what they give me. And that's a huge problem. We HAVE to have a sense of who our main character is within the first ten pages.

As I told these guys, I love what they do with action. And you have to give them credit for jumping RIGHT INTO their story. I mean we waste no time here. We have our main character approached for this anti-terrorism job within the first five pages. But for me to connect with something - and really like something - I have to connect with the main character. And right now there’s just something false about Nathan. He wasn't a person I wanted to go on a trip with. My personal suggestion would be to make him a more realistic character. Give him funny moments. But don't make his entire personality a farce – an opportunity to look for as many one-liners or cool comebacks as possible. I believe in the writing here. But I don't believe in Nathan Scorer…yet.

Link: The Fourth Horseman (First Ten Pages)

Would I keep reading? – If I was a producer? Probably. Because I believe this idea has sale potential. But if this were just me reading for the sake of enjoyment? Probably not. The Nathan character just didn’t feel honest enough for me.

What I learned: Be wary of “too cool” banter between characters in an action movie. You know what I'm talking about - the kind of back-and-forth talk that has no basis in reality - artificial names on a page trying to one-up each other with clever comebacks. I find that this happens when writers don't do enough character work ahead of time. They don't know their characters’ histories so of course they don't know what to have them say. And when you don't know what your characters would say, you revert to giving them lines that you've heard in similar movies before, and I feel like that's happened here. Check out the dialogue between Nathan and Dorman that starts on page 4 to get an idea of what I'm talking about. That conversation doesn’t feel real. It feels like two people in an action movie trying to be cool.

type='html'>Genre: Drama
Logline (3rd place): When a prison guard falls in love with the wife of a death-row inmate, he's forced to choose between his love for her or reveal the discovery of crucial evidence that will save her husband's life.
About: Welcome to the first annual “First Ten Pages Week.” What I did was have readers send in loglines then vote on their favorites. The top five loglines, then, would get their first 10 pages read this week. With any of the five reviews, if the comments are positive enough, I’ll review them in full on an Amateur Friday.
Writer: David Birch

I think The Oswald Solution may have the best *crafted* logline of the Top 5. Why? Well, there’s a clear and compelling dilemma at the heart of the idea. Would you save a man’s life if it meant losing the woman you love? That’s a question I’d want to find out the answer to. So I went into this one with a lot of hope.

The first 10 pages of The Oswald Solution introduce us to the Governor, Lamar Snyder, rejecting a stay of execution for a man named “Jefferson,” a former member of his organization. This leads the media to believe that there are ulterior motives going into Snyder’s decision. We then meet an alcoholic correctional officer named Melvin Delray who is sent to pick up Jefferson from the courthouse. When his car is attacked by a mob of ferocious protestors, however, he heads back to the jailhouse where he convenes with a bunch of fellow employees.

The Oswald Solution starts off bumpy. I don't understand why writers refuse to describe their characters. If someone is out there telling you that you shouldn't describe people because you don't want to limit your casting options, don't listen to that garbage. Right now, all that matters is you paint a picture of your story for the reader. And that means telling us something about your character when they're introduced so we get a sense of them. Lamar might as well be invisible because I have no idea what he looks like or what kind of person he is.

A page after Snyder is introduced, I see him talking in front of a cluster of microphones as if he's the Governor or something. Wait a minute. *Is* he the governor? He certainly wasn’t introduced as the governor. I went back to see if I missed something. I notice that in the slugline it says “Governor’s Office.” So technically I should be able to draw the connection between, “This is the governor's office,” and "This is a man in the governor's office.” Therefore he’s probably the Governor.

But “Governor Office” is sometimes used to refer to an entire building, so even though that's a clue, it doesn't definitively tell me anything. The bigger problem here is that we’re introduced to “Lamar Snyder.” We're not introduced to “Governor Lamar Snyder.” Just that one single word could've taken care of this confusion. In fact, “Governor Snyder” is used one page later. Why would we do that *after* he's introduced as opposed to *when* he was introduced?

You may think this kind of stuff doesn't matter but TRUST ME, it does. The fact that I've already had to go back and check something two pages into the script is a tell-tale sign that I’m in for a bumpy ride.

On the second page, we use “anyone” instead of “any one.” Quickly after, a young reporter asks: “Jefferson was a high ranking member of your political organization, how do respond to the reports that he is requesting you attend the execution?” Not only is there a missing “you” in there but the comma after “organization" should be a period. An isolated mistake every 30 pages can be overlooked. It’s when mistakes compound that I get worried.

We then shift out of the office and meet correctional officer Melvin Delray. As he's driving, he's drinking from a flask. This was the first good moment in the screenplay. That's an action that tells me immediately who this character is. This is someone in an authoritative position who’s drinking on the job. I like the irony. I like the complex character.

Unfortunately, I had no idea how Melvin was affiliated with any of this and where he was driving his car. We get a really confusing scene where he and his partner hear a bunch of sirens and then simply crash into a pole. I know he’s drinking but if you’re a professional driver, is it that hard to pull off to the side of the road? He's then attacked by the giant mob right in front of the courthouse, and in the middle of this terrifying situation, we simply CUT to the jailhouse. Wait a minute. What just happened?? Did they get hurt? Did the crowd break in??

It was only afterwards that I figured out they were going to pick up Jefferson and it all went wrong. However, it looks like Jefferson was still transferred to prison. But how if these guys didn’t do it? I’m not sure since we cut away from that mob scene.

A lot of this confusion could've been avoided by Melvin making a call a block away from the courthouse and saying something like, “Pickup for Jefferson a block away.” But that still doesn't explain to me who the police cruiser and ambulance were. Were they just a random police cruiser and ambulance speeding by? That’s kind of coincidental. With this huge mob scene, I’d think that if anything was speeding anywhere, it would be to here.

We then get back to the correctional facility and proceed to meet a dozen correctional officers within two pages. Names were coming at us faster than Trajent Future insults. This is almost always a bad sign. Professionals know that a reader only has so much space in their brain to remember people. On top of that, they know to never throw a ton of characters at a reader all at once because they’ll be lucky if the reader remembers 25% of them. Indeed, I’d forgotten over half these names less than a page after I’d read them.

In addition, the script doesn't seem to be going anywhere anymore. We're stuck in this correctional facility with a bunch of people talking. There is only so much time in your first act. Every scene needs to be pushing the story forward. You don't have time to dwell on insignificant people and insignificant moments. And unfortunately, that's what I'm seeing here. We're just stuck in this place trying to remember people, trying to figure out who's who, trying to figure out why we're here.

These first 10 pages suffer from the same thing a lot of scripts suffer from - a lack of clarity. It feels like David understands what he's trying to do, but he doesn't understand what he needs to put on the page so that we understand it as well. David gives us clues and generalizations and pieces of what we need to know, but not enough for us to breeze through the read with no questions asked. These pages need to be cleaned up, streamlined, and clarified. Currently, it’s too much of a jumble.

WOULD I KEEP READING? – Unfortunately, no. Too many characters. Too confusing. Too many grammar and punctuation mishaps.

Link: The Oswald Solution (first 10 Pages)

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

What I learned: Clarity is such an issue for new screenwriters because they're simply unaware of the fact that the reader isn’t in their head with them. They just assume that because it's clear to them, it will be clear to everybody else. For that reason, it's a good idea to take a chunk of your screenplay, say 10 pages like this, then give them to a friend and ask, “Is this clear?” “Do you understand everything that's going on here?" “Did you have to reread anything to get it?" What you'll find is that you actually have to give the reader more information than you think you have to. Now it's a balancing act because you don't want to burden your script with too much explanation. But you want to make sure that every key moment is dead clear on the page, or else you’ll lose your reader.

type='html'>Genre: Action Comedy
Logline (4th place): When a meek and universally abused copy editor is mistaken for the professional killer she accidentally bumped off, she decides to take on this violent new identity until the killer turns out to be not so dead, and very pissed off.
About: Welcome to the first annual “First Ten Pages Week.” What I did was have readers send in loglines then vote on their favorites. The top five loglines, then, would get their first 10 pages read. With any of this week’s reviews, if the comments are positive enough, I’ll review them in full on an Amateur Friday.
Writer: Emily Blake (check out Emily’s Blog – Bamboo Killers)

Mila Kunis for Mary Beth?

When this logline first came in, I admit I didn't think much of it. I mean it was good enough to make the Top 50, but I wasn’t sure it would fare well against everyone else. Then it started getting all these votes and I was like, "Hmmm…Let me take a look at this again." When I read it a second time, I realized it had more potential than I originally thought. In fact, it had the best title and logline *combination* of the five entries. What I mean by that is, of all the combos, I got the best sense of what the movie was by looking at the title and the logline together. And I can't tell you how huge that is. When you’re on the outside of those pearly studio gates, your logline and title are the only two things advertising your script. So if you can come up with a combination that sells your story clearly, you're in really good shape. For contrast purposes, compare this to Stationary, where we got a sense of the movie but didn’t get the full picture.

The first 10 pages of Nice Girls Don't Kill start with southern Belle assassination queen Lana walking into a library and killing a librarian who owes her boss money. Cut to Mary Beth, who is the polar opposite of Lana. We observe her backing down from a confrontation with her defense class teacher, backing down from a trainer who bullies his way onto her treadmill, and backing down from an obese woman who cuts in front of her in line. Mary Beth is a girl who seriously needs to step up her game, but from what we’ve seen, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

The pages…

First of all, we have a solid opening scene. Some nice atmosphere is created with an empty library at closing time, thunder cackling through the windows. A seemingly innocent girl taps on the door, asks to come in, and then assassinates the librarian. We have some nice dialogue in the scene: “Listen, honey. I'm a nice girl. I don't do that whole bamboo under the fingernail shit, but if you paw at me again I will shoot off your shriveled old Willy, put a knife in your gut and leave you to bleed to death. Are we clear?” The only thing I didn’t dig was Lana singing “Cherry Pie” to her ringtone as she cleaned up her kill. It just felt a little forced. But overall, I was into it.

However once we cut to Mary Beth, Emily starts working a little too hard to convey her heroine’s fatal flaw. Conveying a protagonist’s fatal flaw is an art. You want to make it clear. But you don’t want to whack us too hard with it or it feels forced. In this case, we see Mary Beth kicking ass when she's banging on the punching bag, but then unable to hit her instructor when he (she?) tells her to. The instructor goes apeshit on her for her weakness and even calls Mary Beth a giant pussy.

We follow this with Mary Beth on the treadmill staring at a slutty client flirting with a trainer. The duo then comes over and boots her off, and she meekly retreats to the locker room without saying a word. We then get a scene in the locker room where Mary Beth observes some badass woman taking charge. If only she could be that tough… We then follow THIS with a scene in the bus line where someone cuts in front of Mary Beth and she doesn’t say anything. And then, in addition to all of this, Mary Beth keeps spotting numerous advertisements for an energy drink called…yes…“Potential.”

I think it’s safe to say that Emily drove the character flaw nail into the 2x4, then kept slamming it until she split the board in half. Selling a character flaw is good. But at some point, you gotta let the customer experience the product for themselves.

Afterwards, Mary Beth walks up the stairs to her apartment, and there her landlord is, asking for rent. I have no problem with this scene. It raises the stakes and forces your character to act. But you have to realize, I’ve read maybe 800 scripts (no exaggeration) where a landlord wants rent from the protagonist. All I ask is for from the writer is to show this moment in a unique way. Simply having the landlord yell, “You’re late with rent,” is boring and predictable. You’re a writer. This is what you do. You come up with unique ways to spin familiar situations. Maybe Mary Beth comes home and finds her refrigerator gone. In its place is a note. “You steal from me? I steal from you. Pay your rent!” Maybe this is even a common practice. There are notes all over the apartment from things that have been stolen by the landlord. That may be a dumb idea. I don’t care. It’s better than the tried-and-true landlord (who, although not in Emily’s script, is almost always Eastern European) standing at the doorway and demanding rent when our hero comes home from a long day.

Nice Girls, all in all, was probably the toughest of the five entries to judge. There’s nothing really wrong here. I mean, yeah, there’s the fatal flaw repetition I mentioned above. But that’s an easy fix. Just cut a couple of those scenes and we’re fine. But there’s nothing I got too excited about either. Nice Girls falls into that dreaded category of “Good but not great.” Or, as the Hollywood types like to say it: “Liked it didn’t love it.”

So then how do we bring this up to a “love it?” Well, I’m going to offer the same advice I offer everyone.  Professional readers spend *all day* reading scripts with the same scenes and the same plot points and the same characters and the same devices used to make us like or hate those characters. It’s all so familiar. So what gets us on the edge of our seat? When writers TRY HARDER. When they don’t go with the obvious choice. The “rent is due” scene is the perfect example. You need to TRY HARDER and give us something slightly different from what we’ve seen before. And you need to do that FOR EVERYTHING. If you even have an inkling that you’ve seen the scene you’re writing before? Try to come up with SOME SPIN, some FRESH POINT OF VIEW, that makes it read differently. Nice Girls Don’t Kill is too familiar in its current incarnation. And I think that if Emily were pushed more – had a development person on her ass – that she wouldn’t be taking these safe routes. She’d be pushing herself and coming up with better, more original, material. Since not a lot of us have a development person calling us on our bullshit, we have to depend on our inner development person. In other words, you have to call your own bullshit.

Would I keep reading?: Maybe. Truthfully, this is one of those scripts where I’d probably say, “I’ll give this until the end of the first act to pick up.”

Link: Nice Girls Don’t Kill (First Ten)

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

What I learned: Beware of “Pause scenes.” – “Pause scenes” are any scene where you pause your story to put something in that doesn’t push the story forward. The treadmill scene is a classic “pause scene.” There is no story information in this scene whatsoever. The only point of the scene is to tell us something about our character. And in this case, it’s to tell us something about our character that we already know, since we just saw Mary Beth back down from her instructor a scene ago. I’d argue that the changing room scene and the bus scene are also pause scenes. So how would you unpause the treadmill scene? Well, maybe Mary Beth’s best friend is on the treadmill next to her and they’re setting up later story points (“You’re coming out tonight to meet Bob. You know that right?” “You mean Ear-hair guy?” “He is a nice man with an ear-hair issue okay. And he’s a book nerd. Like you. You’re not getting any younger you know.” “Fine.”) Now you have STORY INFORMATION conveyed in the scene so the scene itself is actually necessary. If all you’re doing with a scene is telling us about your character, you’re writing a pause scene.

type='html'>Genre: Contained Thriller
Logline (5th Place): Posted out to a remote nuclear waste dump site in the Australian Outback to secretly assess the mental state of the ex-addict Aboriginal worker who mans the plant, an anxious young female psychiatrist is forced into a fight for survival when they find a mysterious stranger stranded in the desert.
About: Welcome to the first annual “First Ten Pages Week.” What I did was have readers send in loglines then vote on their favorites. The top five loglines, then, would get their first 10 pages read. With any of this week’s reviews, if the comments are positive enough, I’ll review them in full on a future Amateur Friday.
Writers: Adam Gyngell and Fred Fernandez-Armesto

Some people expressed surprise by the fact that this logline made the top five, and I can understand their skepticism. Although the idea clearly has potential, it sure takes a long time to explain it. It seems like we're getting some unnecessary pieces of information here. The trick with loglines is to give the reader every single piece of relevant information to your story in as few words as possible. This logline could clearly benefit from a Dianne Cameron intervention.

The first 10 pages of Deep Burial begin with a scientist killing himself for mysterious reasons. Afterwards, we meet the seemingly unaffiliated Robinson, a mixed race Aboriginal who’s taking care of a nuclear waste dump facility out in the middle of the Australian desert. Soon after, a young woman named Abby shows up. She's been sent by the corporation to make sure the place is running smoothly. She’s surprised to learn that Robinson has been here all by himself for a couple of years now. She also learns that he doesn’t take kindly to visitors.

Deep Burial starts off strong and not so strong. We watch as a scientist sets up a camera, tells his family he loves them, then shoots himself. That’s a compelling way to open a movie. But I don't like that the scientist is described as thin, receding hairline, with birdlike features. In other words, he looks exactly like the prototypical scientist. What were we just talking about yesterday? BE DIFFERENT! Don’t go with the first, most obvious, choice!

Generic choices within the first ten pages indicate that I’m going to be reading an entire screenplay full of generic choices. So now I’m grumpy. Why can’t this scientist be well-built? Why can’t he be handsome? Why can’t he be Spanish? Why can’t it be a woman instead of a man? Anything but the prototypical version of a scientist we’ve seen so many times before.

This is also the third script this week that’s had a mistake on the very first page. “The Scientist’s stares straight into the camera." There should be no “apostrophe s” there. And why is “Scientist” capitalized? If the word “the” is in front of it, “scientist” shouldn't be capitalized.

Luckily, things quickly get better. I absolutely love the image of a man in a hazmat suit whacking a golf ball in the middle of the desert. That's a great image that I've never seen before. In addition, it tells me a lot about this character. Clearly, this guy is a little off, and that makes him intriguing. I want to learn more.

We then jump to a helicopter, where we meet Abby, and now I’m starting to see some skill on display here. I love the way the exposition is handled. As the pilot gives Abby a rundown of who this guy is, it feels like the exact sort of conversation that would happen in this circumstance. So the fact that it's all exposition explaining Robinson’s past doesn't really register with us. It’s sort of a “resume moment” coming from a third party. The only thing about the scene that doesn’t work is that Abby’s surprised Robinson is out here alone. I'm pretty sure she would've been briefed about this before coming out.

When Robinson is finally introduced to us, I get the best description, and therefore the best sense of a character, of any of the characters introduced this week (italics are mine):

Leaning against the door, a mixed-race Aboriginal Man. Sallow, grey skin, dark bags under the eyes.

Abby’s visibly surprised. She didn’t expect him to be...

This is ROBINSON: late-30s, but he wears the years heavy. Three day beard on his face. Sinewy. Weathered. He’s taken a few hits, but he rolls with the punches.

That's a character I can imagine. I especially love the line, “but he wears the years heavy.” I do have an issue with the last sentence, but I'll save that for the “What I Learned” section.

Unfortunately, the arrow starts pointing down when Robinson starts talking. Up until this point, we've been presented with the notion that this guy is nuts, he's crazy, he's off his rocker. I've been anticipating this moment for the last six pages. However, when he opens his mouth, it turns out he's just a bitter old curmudgeon. There's nothing very interesting about him to be honest. And I'm annoyed by him fairly quickly. His vocabulary seems to revolve around different ways of saying, “Get out of my way.”

This leads to a bigger issue, however. And it's something I see a lot. You're always looking to create conflict in your screenplay. That's what makes a story dramatic. But you have to do so INVISIBLY. You can’t force it. There may be more to Robinson we learn later. But right now, I find it odd that he doesn't seem to have any reason to hate this person and yet he does. I mean I could imagine him being distant. But his reactions are way over-the-top whenever Abby tries to say anything. So the conflict feels forced and therefore false.

On the plus side, I like that the goal is established right away. Abby is here to inspect the place and make sure everything's working efficiently for the company. If it isn't, the company is going to shut the place down. Since Robinson needs this place, that means we now have stakes and a ticking time bomb. So right away, within our first 10 pages, we've established our characters as well as the goals for those characters. That's a good sign.

So overall, this is a mixed bag. The writing is clear. The writers understand how to set up characters and a story. There's a lot of intrigue (remote nuclear waste dump has all sorts of possibilities). But there are a couple of cliché choices and our star character comes off as underwhelming. You can’t build up this crazy character then leave us with Average Angry Dude.

Go back and do a character biography on Robinson. Where did he grow up? What is his relationship with his parents? What kind of person was he at school? Did he have friends? Was he a loner? Has this man ever been married? What was he doing in the five years of his life previous to this job? What was he doing five days ago before your story started? The answers to these questions are going to filter into your character’s actions/personality/dialogue/etc. The more questions you ask, the more rounded your character will be. The golf stuff was a good start. But you need a lot more.

Would I keep reading? – Yes. Right now I’m on the fence about this script but as you guys know, I love these types of stories. Remote area. Just a few characters. Lots of potential for conflict. Lots of potential for secrets, twists, surprises. If I were to start a production company tomorrow, this is the kind of movie I would probably make first. Even if the script wasn’t perfect, I’d have confidence that I could develop it with the writers.

Script link (First Ten Pages): Deep Burial

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

What I learned: Don't double up on your character description. Here's the description of Robinson again: “This is ROBINSON: late-30s, but he wears the years heavy. Three day beard on his face. Sinewy. Weathered. He’s taken a few hits, but he rolls with the punches.” That last sentence is redundant. “But he wears the years heavy,” combined with “three-day-old beard” implies that he’s taken a few hits and keeps going. Yes, we want to describe our main character as best we can. But it's annoying when the writer repeats information, especially if it’s information from one sentence ago.

type='html'>

Talk about a great opening 10 pages!

Okay guys, Twit-Pitch is alive and well. And if you were following my Twitter feed every night, you’d be seeing me analyze the first ten pages of these entries in REAL-TIME. That’s right. I actually tweet what I’m thinking AS I’M THINKING IT. What other contest does that!? This is unprecedented stuff here so if you’re not following me on Twitter yet, you best remedy that right away!

Now, I bring up Twit-Pitch because when you read ONLY the first 10 pages of a bunch of scripts in a short span of time, you REALLY start paying attention to what makes those pages work or not work. And while it’s nothing new to say “Make sure your first 10 pages are awesome,” it really hit me how important that piece of advice is during this exercise. I realized how quickly that feeling of going one way or the other comes for the reader.

The thing is, when writers hear this advice, they get the wrong idea. They believe “make your first 10 pages great” means immediately assaulting the reader with a huge car chase or a big action set-piece. I’m not saying those won’t capture the readers’ attention if done well, but a generic action scene is just as boring as a generic dialogue scene.

So I sat back and thought about all the openings I liked (both with these pages and with other scripts I’ve read) and while I can’t say I’ve come up with a definitive formula for roping in the reader, I can tell you that when comparing the first ten pages of all these scripts, I found a few go-to approaches that give you the best shot at grabbing the reader’s attention.

One of the best ways to open a script is to introduce a problem. When you introduce a problem, the reader will want to stick around to see if that problem is solved. So in The Sixth Sense, the movie starts with husband and wife having a quiet moment in their bedroom, when, all of a sudden, an old patient breaks in and starts threatening them. This patient is the *problem.* He’s threatening our hero and his wife. I don’t know any readers who would not want to find out how this scene ends.

But you don't have to be telling a ghost story or writing an action film to start with a problem. You can inject a problem into anything. Maybe you open with a teenage girl on the subway with two menacing hoodlums staring at her from across the car. Maybe you start with a woman finding out she’s pregnant. Maybe you start with a lawyer losing his job. Just introduce a problem and you’ve got us.

The next thing you can start with is a mystery. A reader is always going to be roped in if there's some sort of mystery presented to them. You need look no further than Inception to see how to open your script with a good mystery. We see our main character washing up on shore. We see our main character asleep in an apartment with a mob approaching. We see our main character asleep on a train. If I'm a reader, I want to find out how this is happening. I want to keep reading.

The third thing you can start with is a good old-fashioned Scriptshadow staple - a GOAL. Just give your character a goal and we’ll want to see if he gets it or not. The prototypical example of this is Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones’ goal is to get the gold monkey in the cave and get out. Throw a few obstacles in the way and you have yourself a great opening sequence.

Another solid opening move is a surprise. I like this one because it actually allows you to start slow. You can introduce your characters. Establish a little bit of setup along the way. And then at some point in the scene, throw in a shocking surprise that jolts the reader. It's been a while since I've seen Iron Man, but if I remember correctly, we start with Tony Stark in a Humvee with some other soldiers chatting away, then out of nowhere – BOOM! - his vehicle is attacked.

If none of these openings float your script’s boat, then AT LEAST start us off with some conflict. Give us an imbalance that projects a feeling of instability. If something's unstable, we intrinsically want to stick around until it stabilizes. So in Fargo, a man walks into a bar to discuss the kidnapping of his wife with a couple of contract men. Immediately, the two parties are not on the same page. They point out how our protagonist is late. Our protagonist counters by insisting he’s on time. This conflict seeps its way into their conversation, making a somewhat straightforward dialogue scene interesting!

Now you don’t have to use any of these approaches if you don’t want. There are plenty of other ways to open a screenplay and I encourage you guys to list them in the comments. But from my experience, if you want to hook a reader right away, these are extremely solid bets. Now if all this stuff intimidates you or confuses you, or you’re convinced there’s no way to use any of these methods in the kind of script you’re writing, then there’s one failsafe rule to fall back on: Make sure something interesting is happening. That's all. Don't bore us with two people talking about something that’s ultimately irrelevant. Give us a scene where something interesting is happening and we’ll be intrigued.

So now that you have a good idea of how to rope a reader in with your first 10, I thought it would be the perfect time to look over the first 14 entrants I’ve read in the Twit-Pitch contest. Of these 14, 8 of them did not make it to the next round. 5 of them received “maybe” votes, meaning I’ll revisit them after I’ve read everything, and 1 received the coveted “definite” vote (“The Tradition - 1867 After losing her father, a woman unwittingly takes a job as a maid at a countryhouse of aristocratic cannibals”). Below, I’m including all the scripts the writers let me post. Check out what you can and study the first ten pages. Determine why you liked some and disliked others. Share your observations in the comments section. And if you know of any other tricks to pull the reader in in the first 10, share those too!

DIDN’T MAKE IT

Tusk
The ghost of a legendary movie star gets tangled up in his own biopic when he needs the help of the heartthrob cast to play him.

Untitled Hoarder
A hoarder finds the girl of his dreams only to lose her in his apartment.


Treetop
After running away from home, an eight foot tall teenager stumbles upon a retirement town for sideshow performers.

Nuts & Rats
An ex-cop awakes in an alternative reality where normal people are locked up in mental institutions and society is run by lunatics.

Open House
Desperate to divorce but cash-strapped, ornery newlyweds must put their feuding aside to sell their house, much less agree on a price.

Godfathers
Two guys have one weekend to battle for the coveted 'Godfather' title to their best friend's new daughter.

Local .357
Ex-CIA assassin unionizes an eclectic group of freelance hitmen to "negotiate" with their mob employers. Norma Rae meets RED

The Lipschitz Affair
When an art heist interrupts a wedding at the Guggenheim, everyone's a suspect -- even the bride and groom

MAYBE

The Last Rough Rider
It's 1901. Terrorists have just taken over the White House. And only Theodore Roosevelt can stop them.

Blackhats
A hacker for hire finds himself in a deadly web of corporate espionage after being hired to steal the 1st sentient A.I.

Ridin’ The Gravy Train
With his favorite fast-food sandwich facing its final week before it's phased out forever, an obsessed man leads a protest to save it.

Gino And Me
In early 1980s New Jersey, a 12-year-old decides to profile the local mob boss for his seventh grade English project despite the vehement disapproval of his mother.

Crimson Road
Can it get any worse than living next door to a serial killer? It can if you live on CRIMSON ROAD... the whole street is full of them.

type='html'>**Genius** script review coming later today!!!

Holy sh*t.  This script didn't make one mistake!  AMAZING!

Review coming by 1pm Pacific Time.

type='html'>Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: When a male skeleton holding a gun is found inside the fossilized remains of a T-Rex, a young paleontologist must get to the bottom of how it happened.
HOW TO SUBMIT: Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re interested in submitting your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted in the review (feel free to keep your identity and script title private by providing an alias and fake title).
Writer: Darren Howell
Details: 115 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Finally! We get some high concept action up in this joint!

Strap on your jetpacks tadpoles. This is about to get loopy.

Paleontologist or fossil-seeker (whatever you call them) Dr. Rosy Kean, has just made a major discovery. An entire T-Rex fossil buried in the ground. But that’s not all. This T-Rex has inside of its “stomach” a skeleton – a skeleton of a man. A skeleton of a man with a GUN. Uh-huh. Yeah. Things just got interesting.

So Rosy calls up her old flame - used to be FBI agent, now a security guard - Danny Wallace, to get a match on the gun. Danny looks up the serial number and guess what? It’s the same serial number as HIS CURRENT GUN. Naturally, Danny thinks this is all a joke and doesn’t really pay attention to it. Especially because there are other things going on in the world. Like in Iran where a 9.2 earthquake just rocked one of their nuclear facilities.

Anyway, Rosy gets a call from her old friend Cassandra Wallace, the richest woman in the world (who also happens to be Danny’s mother) who wants her to come back to the U.S. ASAP. She’s got something she wants to tell her.

Rosy does, but in the meantime, all over the world, there are these strange “gravity bumps” where everything jolts out of place. Certainly there’s gotta be something going on here. And Danny wants to get to the bottom of it. But when an oil tanker falls out of the sky into the middle of New York, that’s when it gets really bad. People need answers now.

Danny does some digging and eventually finds out that the government has some sort of secret new weapon they’re working on that creates controllable black holes. I mean, screw nuclear weapons. That’s old school. If you can control black holes, you could decimate anything. Then afterwards you just close them back up. The question is, where do these black holes end? Where are they sending this stuff back to?

Eventually Rosy, Danny, and Cassandra all meet up and – and this is where my understanding of what happens gets a little shaky – decide that Danny’s going to go back in time where these black holes are sending all this stuff to. He does (spoilers), which is where he meets his fate with the dinosaur. We then jump forward to 1960, where we find out the truth behind who Cassandra really is, and the mystery behind her tremendous wealth.

Whoa. First Man On Earth indeed.

Initial thoughts on this one? Intriguing. Exciting. But messy. I mean, this script explores a TON of ideas. But it makes a mistake a lot of writers make early on. Trying to throw everything and the kitchen sink into their story. A looming world war isn’t enough. It has to be a world war with wormholes and time travel and ships falling out of the sky. I actually liked some of this stuff because it was unique. But the truth is, there was too much going on.

I’m reminded of what happened with Good Will Hunting’s development. The original script for that had Will Hunting on the run with the government chasing him and a bunch of thriller craziness. But the producers told them, “Whoa, let’s slow this down. It looks like you have some better characters here than you’re giving yourself credit for.” Subsequent drafts concentrated more on the relationships between the characters and the movie went on to win a screenwriting Oscar.

I would suggest some of that here, but maybe not to the degree that they did it. I think the time travel stuff is intriguing and reveals an interesting final twist. But I’m not sure I like all the wormhole this and wormhole that and quantum physics breakdown and boats falling out of skies and Russia and China joining forces and U.S. secret weapons. That stuff is cool if you’re making a Roland Emmerich movie, but I think this has the potential to be more. The strange triangle relationship between Danny, Rosy, and Cassandra can be mined for more drama. Then build a simpler story around that. You don’t lose much because you still have your high concept (time travel). Yet now your story doesn’t seem like it’s cluttered or trying too hard. I mean, I’m still not sure why the hell we started this movie in Iran.

I’m also not sure the FBI angle works. I would stay consistent with the movie’s hook. Make Danny some kind of scientist, like Rosy.

This script had other issues as well. Sometimes we can be so focused on giving our characters problems and flaws, that we just throw something in there cause it checks the box. Danny hating his mother because she gives him “too much love” may be the dumbest reason for a relationship disconnect ever. Even if it were realistic, the fact that Danny’s droning on about how difficult it is to have someone love him so much is not only stupid, but it makes him look like a total asshole. I can somewhat understand why this was used after the twist was revealed, but it creates too much frustration for the reader in the 90-some pages leading up to the twist to justify its use.

I also thought the Mallinson storyline (Mallinson is a character who tries to take credit for the T-Rex discovery) was too on-the-nose, had no story value, and crumbled under the weight of how “cliché bad guy” Mallinson was. I couldn’t understand why we were spending so much time with him. Our villains needed to be direct adversaries of Rosy and Danny. Not 10,000 miles away.

Speaking of, the fact that the T-Rex discovery was off in a different place than was the rest of the story gave me the uncomfortablies. Almost like the writer wanted to get the dinosaur hook in, then get to the U.S. as soon as possible. If there’s any way to keep the story more centralized, I’d recommend that. For example, if Danny and Cassandra were flown over there as opposed to the other way around, and everything took place in a nearby foreign city, sort of like how the bulk of Raiders takes place in Cairo, I’d recommend that. I just don’t like jumping all over the world unless it’s absolutely necessary. And these characters didn’t absolutely need to be in the U.S. Especially if you get rid of all that FBI stuff.

Another big issue here is over-information. And this often happens when you’re throwing everything and the kitchen sink at your story. At a certain point, there’s just too much to explain. And that this script felt part Quantum Physics course was not a good omen for a story that already had to explain the connection between current black holes and the extinction of the dinosaurs, as well as why China and Russia were turning into one big super-country.

Here’s the thing. Sometimes we feel like we have to “prove” to the reader that we’ve researched this or know what we’re talking about, so we dedicate pages upon pages of characters spouting out boring exposition as to how the whole thing works. It’s good to do research, but always remember that you’re entertaining your audience first. Tell them what they need to know but nothing more – ESPECIALLY if you already have a ton of other crazy shit you have to explain.

I can’t give this script a “worth the read” because it’s too sloppy and there’s too much going on and I’m not sure all the parts fit together. But I will say this is a great concept to be working with for a spec script. It’s going to get the writer reads. And if Darren can find the story somewhere inside of all this madness, First Man On Earth has a chance of becoming something really good. I believe that.

Script link: First Man On Earth

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me (very close to worth the read)
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Beware of the residual effects of an exposition heavy movie. You become so satisfied with making everything make sense, that you don’t realize you’re having to jam character backstory in all the way down on page 84 (with Rosy). This is a direct result of not having anywhere to put this stuff earlier, where it should be. This is the same reason why we know nothing about any of the characters in Inception besides Cobb, and thus why they feel so empty. So much time needed to be spent on explaining the never-ending rules of dream-navigation that there wasn’t any time left for character development. Only give us the information/explanation we need and nothing more.