A Year in the Life of a Spec Script
From "F1 Mahjong" to "Negative Split"
The Spec Script
In features screenwriting, a “spec script” is a speculative script, a document a writer will produce in order to sell. It is not done on assignment or under contract, it is an original idea a writer takes on in the hopes that someone will make it.
The end goal of most spec scripts is an option or a sale, but some writers will crank out specs to have a sample proving they can work in a certain genre.
My project Perfect Girl started out as a spec called UNNIE before landing on the Black List and getting optioned by Badlands.
It is recommended that feature writers write at least one new spec script per year. I know of some writers who are ridiculously fast and can crank out a spec in less than a month (one writer friend of mine cranked out a spec in 48 hours during COVID and then sold it to Lionsgate in a jaw-dropping feat of speed and moxie).
Some are slower and will spend years nursing a single spec (one friend of mine has been hacking away at the same feature for over four years now). The pace at which a spec gets written is contingent on a lot of factors, ranging from what’s happening in the world at the moment to what’s happening in life (remember, a writer is working on about a dozen things at once, it’s not like the spec is the only task at hand).
For me, I usually go at a pace of one per year. I am on the verge of putting out two spec scripts this spring, which is an unusual anomaly coming down to luck and timing.
Today, I thought I’d take you on the journey of how a spec script gets developed using a spec I’m currently working on as a case study.
A year in the life of a spec
February 2024 - Idea Conception
In February of last year, I was listening to a podcast with Ryan Holiday where he wondered what Day 1 of retirement looked like for a GOAT athlete (Jordan, Brady, Phelps, etc.).
I became very intrigued by the question and did some brief reading on the retirement of great athletes, how much of a funeral wake it feels like for them, how enormous of a transition. One ESPN interview with Michael Jordan conducted when Jordan turned 50 eventually turned into the epigraph for this script:
March 2024 - Initial Burst of Pages
In March 2024, I took a trip to visit family in Asia.
I had recently acquired a NeoSmart2, a nifty little typing device that does not connect to the Internet and does not really scroll, forcing one to focus on just writing. I love this little thing because it gets you out of your head and prevents you from obsessing during the barf draft — later, you connect this guy up to your laptop via USB and it transcribes everything you’ve written.
At this time, I happened to be obsessed with Formula One and the game of mahjong. I conceived of the following logline:
What if a Formula One great (a Lewis Hamilton analogue) retired and became obsessed with competitive mahjong?
I didn’t have any real outline or plans for this script, I just started writing on my NeoSmart2. I wrote for about 8 hours on a flight from LA to Taipei, and over the course of the next three weeks as I traveled Asia, I would intermittently crack out the NeoSmart2 and add more.
When I came home, I plugged my guy in and discovered I had unwittingly typed up 37 pages! I then shelved the project as other projects were demanding my attention.
May/June 2024 - Filling Out the First Draft
In May, I pulled out the 37 pages I had written and re-read them. They weren’t terrible, and I really enjoyed the tone of them (I especially liked that it was an indie drama, a genre completely different from the commercial horror I had been operating in).
I knew that the emotion I wanted to evoke with this project was grief, remorse, and acceptance, and there was one scene I was building towards that I wanted to make readers (and hopefully one day viewers) cry.
I decided to finish fleshing out the first draft of “F1 Mahjong”, which I didn’t have a working title for. By June 2024, I had cranked out a draft.
And then the F1 trailer dropped
In early July, the trailer for Jerry Bruckheimer’s 9-figure F1 movie dropped:
It looked so sick. I read that the movie invented a new camera just to capture the race sequences.
As soon as I saw the trailer, I knew there wasn’t space in the market for multiple Formula One movies in such close proximity to each other. Even though my script was mostly concerning mahjong, not F1, there was enough F1 in it to drive up the budget.
Discouraged, I set “F1 Mahjong” to the side.
July 2024 - the Paris Olympics
But then, the 2024 Paris Olympics happened. I LOVE the Olympics — the story-telling, the hope, the “rah rah rah” of nations around the world.
Watching the Paris Olympics reminded me of my great love for the sport of swimming. Around this time, I was researching the mentality of athletes, and I watched the following documentary:
The documentary, which is available on Max, goes into the “Post-Olympic blues,” the severe mental health crash that Olympic athletes suffer shortly after the games conclude. I was stunned to learn that Michael Phelps, the indisputable GOAT of swimming and arguably the most successful Olympian of all time, toyed with suicidal ideation shortly after the 2012 London Olympics.
I started to re-write “F1 Mahjong” to be “Olympics Mahjong” — a retired Olympic swimmer gets into competitive mahjong.
I decided to make the protagonist similar in achievement to Caeleb Dressel, a prominent swimmer on Team USA, who was finishing out his Olympic career in Paris. Dressel would end up with a total of 9 Olympic gold medals — someone who had a storied Olympic run, and was very well-known within a specific community, but would be largely unrecognized by the vast majority of people.
However, since I had started writing “F1 Mahjong” in Britain, I decided to keep it that way since so much of the first draft was done in British dialogue. “Olympics Mahjong” followed a British swimmer as he returned home to Bristol following a storied swimming career.
But then summer caught up with me, and the project was put on the backburner once more.
September 2024 - Olympics Mahjong Revamp
In September 2024, I overhauled “Olympics Mahjong.” At this time, I started to question whether the script needed an additional element to it — perhaps a twist that the Chinese grandma the protagonist plays is just a figment of his imagination? Perhaps I needed to go full Fight Club and get an underground mahjong ring involved?
I was worried that a straight indie drama simply wasn’t salable in today’s market. After a few weeks of quibbles, I ultimately decided to keep the project an indie drama (I would go so far as to say this script is something of a melodrama). It helped that I was working on another script at the same time that was genre-bending, so I felt okay having one project that was more indie and “less commercial.”
January 2025 - Something’s Still Not Landing
After the September revamp, “Olympics Mahjong” got put on the back burner for the rest of the year due to other more pressing projects.
When I revisited the script in January, something about it was still off.
Since its inception, I knew I wanted the protagonist to end up trying to qualify for the World Series of Mahjong by playing at the British regional tournament.
For the past 10 months, the structure of the film had been:
Act 1 — protagonist retires from Formula 1/swimming.
Act 2 — protag becomes obsessed with mahjong
Midpoint — Protag loses a high-profile practice tournament, causing him public humiliation
Act 3 - protag redeems himself at Regionals
However, every time I read the script, I found myself bored by the time I reached Act 3. I simply didn’t care to read through yet another set piece sequence, and I already knew I would be getting feedback about the stakes of this movie.
February 2025 - Silver Linings Playbook and He Got Game
In February, two movies helped me crack the structure.
I re-watched Silver Linings Playbook, one of the main comps for this project. I had forgotten that Jennifer Lawrence’s character strikes a parlay with Bradley Cooper’s family going into Act 3, setting up very clear stakes for the finale (I actually wonder if David O. Russell was given that exact note about stakes).
I also watched Spike Lee’s He Got Game for the first time, a melodrama in which Denzel Washington must convince his son Ray Allen to play for a certain college team so that Denzel can get his prison sentence shortened.
In He Got Game, the pivotal game takes place 1 vs 1 on a street basketball court, with no crowds, no lights, just the two main characters talking to each other.
Gaining inspiration from both, I revamped the structure of my script to be:
Act 1 — protagonist retires from swimming.
Act 2 — protag obsessed with mahjong
Midpoint — Protag loses regionals
Break into Act 3 — a deal is struck between two characters
Act 3 - protag redeems himself at a private yet emotionally high-stakes game
A title is acquired - Negative Split!
Also in February, a dear friend and former competitive swimmer C. Robert Dimitri helped me come up with a title for the script — “Negative Split.” Finally I could stop referring to it as the “Olympics Mahjong thing I’m working on.”
March 2025 - “Negative Split” is ready to be seen
By March 7, 2025, a year to the day when I first wrote a word on this project, I had a draft that was acceptable.
It was not a great draft, but it was a draft that I felt comfortable sending out for notes. Let me repeat: after a year of work, I had a draft that was ready for feedback, not even one that I was ready to send out to buyers (that likely won’t happen for a few more months, as feedback is solicited and incorporated).
This is why I ascribe to the thesis that those who are nervous others will “steal” their ideas are amateurs.
Ideas are abundant; execution is scarce.
Knowing just how long it takes to write a spec script, I’m never worried someone is going to “steal” my ideas because I doubt that other person is going to spend over a year of their time putting something together.
The process with “Negative Split” has taught me though that I really need to outline going forward. This is probably the last script that I “pants” (fly by the seat of my pants) — because I was just seeing where the story took me, I ended up having to break and re-break this story multiple times. And I’m likely to re-break it at least one or two more times before it’s ready to go to town!
And so, that’s a year in the life of a spec script!
Fascinated by process?
I’m a nut for process and love hearing about other writers and how they go about doing things. If you have stories you’d like to share, I’d love to hear them below. I’ll keep you apprised on how “Negative Split” turns out as the year goes on!
i love how much your "new" technology reminds me of the 80s. i'll put the picture on your facebook. but your media device made me nostalgic for my old brother word processor. single purpose, dedicated to the process of writing on a wordperfect platform. damn. i miss WordPerfect. i could make that one do tricks.