Read the Screenplay Page That Set Social Media Ablaze

If you want to have a career as a screenwriter, there are two things you need to accomplish: You need to develop your voice, and you need to write a great script.

I know this sounds trite, but that's really it. The rest will take care of itself. A great script will open the doors to networking, toward representation, and sustained success.

One writer I have been following since his debut on the Black List in 2010 is Brian Duffield. His spec scripts have a ton of voice, and his writing really pops off the page. When I was an assistant, I loved covering them because Brian always did something outside the box with them.

No, I'm not just talking about the story, but also the style of the page. He bolds words, creates images, and does things to make you really feel the story he's telling.

Brian's latest venture is a movie he also directed called No One Will Save You, and it's on Hulu. It's a tense alien invasion movie delivered through the eyes of a woman with a secret past who's trying to survive.

The movie went viral this weekend because Guillermo del Toro tweeted that he loved it, and because someone posted a page of the script on Reddit, which caused the hot takes to roll in.

Check out the page below.

'No One Will Save You' screenplay

The immediate reaction to the page was a world divided, with some people saying these kinds of pages distract or bump them, and others loving the idea that the script can engage with you in such an interesting and creative way.

While I have never tried anything like that before, I think it's pretty awesome.

Producers read hundreds, if not thousands of screenplays a year. Finding a way to stand out and also connect is not easy.

While I would caution amateurs against overloading their documents with pages like this, I feel like this is a really exciting way to look at a story. If I was still an assistant, I would have thought this was pretty cool. But if the script I had been reading sucked, I would have hated it.

Yes, there are no "rules" when it comes to screenwriting. Well, maybe one rule: tell me a great story!

Screenplays are blueprints for movies, and whatever you can do to help the executives reading it see that, the better. The real moral of this page is that if a script is great, you can get away with doing anything.

Let me know what you think in the comments≥