''Water For Elephants'' in Carson's Top 10 Scripts Of The Year

Carson's Top 10 Scripts Of The Year

Okay now for those of you who read the site every day, these choices probably won’t be that surprising to you. But if you’re only an occasional stop-buyer of Scriptshadow (and if you are, shame on you), then there may be a few succulent chunks of screenplay goodness for you to munch on. Now unlike The Black List, my list isn’t time sensitive. The scripts don’t have to have been written in the year 2010 to qualify. They could’ve been written in 2005, 1997, during the Bubonic Plauge, doesn’t matter, as long as I read it this year. And what may surprise you is that these rankings might not necessarily reflect my Top 25. I’m not even going to look at that list. I’m simply going to choose which scripts affected me and stayed with me the most. That’s the sign of a good script. Not one that masters all the rules of screenwriting. But one that hits you on a gut level. Let’s stop screwing around and get to the list!

2) WATER FOR ELEPHANTS

Genre: Period Drama/Love Story

Premise: (from IMDB) A veterinary student abandons his studies after his parents are killed and joins a traveling circus as their vet.

You know, this is one of those scripts that shouldn’t have roped me in the way it did. It’s basically a love story. But the great thing about Elephants is that it’s a love story wrapped in a loony dangerous unpredictable package - the Bizarro World version of Titanic. Not to mention it has the best villain I’ve read all year hands down (can’t wait to see what Waltz does with it). You’re not going to read anything like this again for a long time.

And there you have it. So, is there a common thread between all of these scripts, something we can take away for our next screenplay? It’s tough to say. However I did notice that almost all the scripts had at least one really memorable character, especially the Top 4. The biggest surprises for me were scripts like Water For Elephants, Untitled Chef Project, and Drive, all of which I was reluctant to pick up because the subject matter didn’t interest me. Yet once I opened them, the characters drew me in like a champagne sunset on a 70 degree July night. So work on those characters people. The concept will get your reader past the title page but once they’re there, it’s the characters that will keep them reading.

Source => Script Shadow / Via => Rob_Tyler_RM---Pattinson Ladies