• Wondering which camera, gear, computer, or software to buy? Ask in our Gear Guide.

I Need Reviews and Feedback

I wrote this screenplay and have been trying to get it produced. Please tell me what you think of it. I need as many reviews and feedback as possible. Thanks so much. (BTW- It is in PDF format)
 
Your formatting needs a lot of work. Tabs are all off, parentheticals are being misused (they are for a description of how a line is said, not the characters action during the line)

Do a bit of reading here: http://www.screenwriting.info/ for correct formatting guidelines. That's the first step to having something that you can present to a potential producer. There is freely available screenwriting software you might want to check out too, here's some links:

http://members.madasafish.com/~iantopeg/ScriptMaker.htm
http://www.apotheosispictures.com/ScreenForge_v11a_Info.htm
http://www.totallywrite.com/Screenwriting_Software_Downloads.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/scriptsmart/
 
By whom?

cmill216 said:
I wrote this screenplay and have been trying to get it produced. Please tell me what you think of it. I need as many reviews and feedback as possible. Thanks so much. (BTW- It is in PDF format)

cmill,

I've taken a brief look at your 10 page script although I really can't read it right now...

Who are you trying to get to produce this for you? I only ask because you would be better off attempting to do this on your own I suspect.

My very brief look at your first page tells me that you must be using a word processor to format your script. That's okay as long as you are formatting correctly. I hate to nitpick on format but when you ask someone outside of your own personal network to read your material, you should always make sure your work is the very best it can be.

Yours isn't even formatted correctly.

Your character names and dialogue is centered... A big NO-NO.

Looks like you're using a flashback but again, not formatted or used correctly.

Too many lines in between characters/dialogue. Double space is best for that. Actually, yours looks inconsistent i.e., sometimes double spaced, sometimes triple spaced...

Your parentheticals within the dialogue is formatted incorrectly and most of it should be put in an action paragraph... Not a parenthetical.

Some of your dialogue is much too wordy... Almost no subtext that I can see. All ON-THE-NOSE dialogue. BAD. It's okay to write on-the-nose dialogue in your first draft because that tells YOU exactly (on-the-nose) what your characters want to say... In your second and subsequent drafts, you need to use subtext... I can't explain subtext here... Do a search on Google for an explanation.

Some really wordy action paragraphs as I scroll toward the bottom... Break those up into 4 lines or less. In fact, try NOT to use even 4 lines unless you really have to.

There are some really good Microsoft Word screenplay templates out there... You just have to look for them. Find one and reformat your script correctly.

I also notice that you use a LOT of PASSIVE sentence structure. Passive sentence structure is in and of itself, WEAK WRITING. Use more ACTIVE sentence structure. If you don't know what I'm talking about, again, do a search on Google and read about it.

Okay, that's just off the top of my head in three minutes... If I get a chance to read the script, I will go ahead and add those comments as well...

By the way... Don't take anything I've said above personally. Just trying to help and get you on the right track.

filmy
 
Hi cmill, ur kind of new so I'm going to say this, I'm critiquing the writing, not the writer. :)

Formatting aside you have no story. Sure a bunch of things happen but none of them is very interesting. I'm kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and it never does. What you have here is the skeleton of a story. Now build off it. Go through and brainstorm. If you have any creative friends, get them all together and let them help you brainstorm (highly caffinated friends are better).

Add meat to your skeleton.

For instance - Eye brings a gun to somebody else’s house, hears a creak, turns and fires. Now that's just plain bad writing. Foreshadow his ineptitude with guns, maybe even a strong apprehension for them. Change that to gun accidently goes off, shoots a priceless vase. Husband goes nuts, they wrestle, mistress picks up the gun, tries to shoot Eye in the back just as Eye slips on a piece of the broken vase making him fall and the mistress shoots the husband in the chest. Now you have something interesting.

Change the vase to something that means a lot to two married people (wedding china or champagne flutes) and you have allegory, change the vase to a crystal trophy of some sort and you have character background on the hubby.

It's little things like this that will add up to make your script better. You have a lot of meat to add and it can get frustrating but honestly the more you pile on top of your protagonist, the more the audience with sympathize with him. Because right now, he's just a cold blooded killer. I don't care what happens to him.

Choosing the right things to pile on to your protagonist, in the right order, is one of the things that separates the writers from the hacks. :cool:

But if a series of unfortunate events (pardon the reference) makes it virtually impossible to prove he didn't kill them both, well then you have a victim of circumstance and we can all relate to that.

A major plot flaw - A P.I. wouldn't rifle through someone else's house alone. He might go there with the wife and give her his experience in where to look. Now you have another cool element, what if the wife is in the house too! Loaded gun, husband dead, the P.I. could be the easy patsy so the wife decides to shoot the mistress and blame the P.I., or maybe the wife had it planned this way all along.

Your naming conventions are a bit odd. Just give everybody a name and keep it consistent. At one point the troubled wife calls the P.I. Mr. Ace. If that's his name, use it for the dialog tag.

I had a bunch of line critiques but I'll pass on those since this needs such a major re-write most of them would go to waste.

So brainstorm, heap on the problems, let us sympathize with him, give him a character arc. Right now he's a lying, money straddled, cold blooded killer. Your audience doesn't care about him and that's not good.

Let me know how it works out. And don't be discouraged, I'd love to see your second draft. ;)
 
Don't be afraid to ask a police officer or a private detective how things work. I've found most people, if you tell them you're a writer doing research, will practically open their whole lives to you. ;)

Another nice perc, buy them and yourself lunch and write it off. :D
 
Your character names and dialogue is centered... A big NO-NO.

Looks like you're using a flashback but again, not formatted or used correctly.
I suggest downloading sophocles (www.sophocles.net). I love this software!


And regarding the screenplay; I didn't go through all of it, but a lot of your descriptions are extremely long. My suggestion would be to either split them into various two sentence paragraphs (as someone else mentioned) or else simply shorten it - too much detail is unneccessary.

Also I agree with FilmJumper regarding the passive descriptions and the on-the-nose dilaogue. In case you don't know what the latter is:

"On the nose dialogue is dialogue that's expected, trite, unimaginative, the text-book cliché response. This is repartee that doesn’t go through the characters’ filters of personality, mood, and world view. Good dialogue opens up scenes and characters’ personalities, and consequently opens up your story. Good dialogue is as much about revealing as it is about concealing."

So in other words, your dialogue is not very realistic; it's almost forced. Writing realistic dilaogue is very easy: all you have to do is listen to people while they're having conversations, take notes. This will help you understand how different character types respond to similar problems/situations. Observe your friends, relatives etc. While writing a scene, try reading the dialogue out loud, try acting out the scene yourself, it helps A LOT. As FilmJumper also mentioned, on-the-nose-dialogue is okay for a first draft because it helps you understand what your characters want to say; but then rewriting is essential in order to make the dialogue realistic...more human...more natural.


Anyway, good luck.
 
Last edited:
As far as the dialouge goes, I do know how to write realistic dialouge. The thing is I was trying to do the whole "film noir" thing and the way they talked in those films, and people think that's how I write all my dialouge. No way! It was a style thing.
 
More about on-the-nose- dialogue:
"On the Nose" dialogue. People in love telling each other
how much they love one another. A woman who's angry because her husband is
cheating on her and also because her father did just the same thing to her
mother and she knows that she's repeating the same pattern -- SAYING to
somebody how she's angry because her husband is cheating on her and also
because her father did just the same thing to her mother and she...etc.,
etc., etc.

In real life, people who talk about themselves and their feelings and their
problems all the time are crashing bores. It shouldn't be surprising that
the same kind of people in a script are equally boring if not more so.

No subtext or purely dialogue-driven scenes. You have the characters
blurt out what might better be expressed in some other way or perhaps
just hinted at. Showing is almost always better than telling in movies.
A good maxim is to only add dialogue as a last resort. Movies where you
can turn the sound down and still get the gist of what's going on are
normally well written and acted.

Do a quick Word Search of your script. If the words "because," "since,"
"that's why" show up in your dialogue, chances are you're in trouble.

By "on the nose" I mean the characters are
saying exactly what the writer wants the reader to know. Often this
takes the form of naked exposition, where one character simply lays out
facts to another character. "On the nose" is also used to describe
dialogue where characters say precisely what they mean, especially in
emotional situations. In good dialogue, a character's meaning is
implied by what he says -- or implied by what he does NOT say.
 
Back
Top