The Gospel by Anonymous 10 - Short, Apocalypse, Dramedy, Thriller - Financial inequality forces civil war across the world, but a man and his followers believe atonement can be made when not found. 7 pages - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hey Writer,

Right then. Some people may get a bit sniffy about the shooting script formatting (numbered scenes and that), but I couldn't really care, for myself the contents of the script is in the writing.

Exceptionally well crafted and written, vivid descriptions that work, and even though there's not a huge variety of scenes or settings (that would usually make me a bitty bored), I was hooked right in. You could possibly have taken it further, you had a couple of pages left to spare, but it worked for myself as it was.

Good job

Cam

Well written, more like a shooting script but what the heck, I could follow it easily enough.

You repeat 'armed men, rag tag and armed' a couple of times in the first two pages.

I'm not 100% sure what's going on. I'm not even 60% sure what's going on. Is it the end of the world? I dunno. It seems to be about some people getting an immortality drug and it seems to have something to do with hair.  You had a few extra pages spare, it may be worth using those to establish more what is actually happening. You try to do that with a bit of expositional dialogue and it's not enough for me.

The dialogue itself is superb, I particularly like the guy who keeps on adding stuff like, "Shall I write that down sir for the Sunday service?" Very good. I just don't really know what's going on.

-Mark

As I go:

• Pg. 1  I like the idea of a creepy guy sitting in a dark room, but the execution wasn't right.  Too wordy.
  
• Pg. 1  Is the sun setting or rising?  Does it matter?  If it doesn't matter, can't the sun just be low in the sky?  Kissing the horizon?
  Or is this a matter of glass half full/half empty kind of thing?
  
• Pg. 1  The dialogue is too cryptic.  I have no idea what they're talking about with the 'cookie cutter' and 'ironic' comments.
  
• Pg. 1  I'm not sure what you were going for with Bishop having to circle around Ford.  That could have been left out.
  
• Pg. 2  How do I know what a door being forced open by professionals looks like?  If I really stop to think about it and compare it to what a door would look like if it were forced open by amateurs, I can see a difference.  This takes me way out of the read though.  Just describe what you want us to see in a little better detail.
  
• Pg. 2  There sure are a lot of 'rag tag and armed' guys here.
  Perhaps coming up with a different description would be better.
  
• Pg. 2  "Who even are you, anyways?"  This sounds strange.  "Who are you anyway." would be better.  Unless you're actually going for a character who says "anyway" incorrectly.
  
• Pg. 3  It looks like you're going for a Gary Oldman persona from The Professional with this (composed) change of mood.
  
• Pg. 3  Why is it bad that he's bald?  I'm not following.
  
• Pg. 5  What's the cipher?  Who is Eckhart?
  
• Pg. 6  "breath" should be "breathe".
  
• Pg. 6  What is the gray flesh colored thing underneath the fur coat?  Is it Eckhart's face?  Is it his eyes?  And what's with the shaving?  Why is hair so important?  DNA?  Strange.
  

I read it twice and it didn't make much more sense the second time around.
I'm guessing it's about people living forever due to some sort of medical procedure, but it's not clear as to what the procedure is and why these people are so mad that they can't afford it.

It seems like you ran out of time too.

Jordan

Hi writer,

Right into the mix, I’m digging the feel, the writing. I was hoping for an answer after all the slick, smooth gospel but, there’s just no way of me knowing what truly happened in these pages with what you wrote.

The Gentiles, as Ford eloquently states, gives me a good indication of your quest within this story, and all the hidden secrets of the Banking Cartel humanity would never  believe to be true… but I do. 'Goyem' or ‘Goy’ is a better word here, if Ford was vicariously speaking through Garrett IMO, it shows his (Garret’s) true disdain for those who are ‘other’, if you catch my drift.

Smart script, smart dialog, well written but, I’m sorry to say I was lost in the final translation re: apocalyptic events. All the best.

Cute title. Decent logline. Great page count.

Ok the dialogue needs work on this one for me. The characters don't stand apart or make me want to care about following them. The stakes are confusing. The end was confusing.

I'm not sure what this is about except I got that something made them live a really long time. I think.

Will wait for the writer to explain. In a week's time... good job for getting one done.

I found this kinda confusing.  I don't really know what happened.  No real explanations.  

It was pretty well written, but, too many questions.

Also, was there an apocalypse of any sort?  Too much left out.  

There could be a good story here, so, I hope you work on it.

Dan  

Delete scene numbers and continued at page break.

"The sun is rising -- or setting on the horizon. It depends
on where you’re seeing it from."

Lol, are you kidding?

Six men – should be capitalized

Some dialogue is witty and sharp. I dislike that there's also a lot of plot explanation and story building through dialogue. It seems the theme of a rich and healthy (modified bodies) against poor (if I understand it right) is mostly delivered by talk. This makes the theme partly feel unreal to me and not as a live experience in the picture.

A good example is: in the dialogue you constantly throw names that are not in the picture: Sam, Senator Bailey, Eckhart.

I'm a firm believer that actions most times are stronger than dialogue. The characters' actions and conflicts here, as well as your descriptions, couldn't carry the dialogue driven concept and plot. There are lots of bits that I found intriguing and it seems you got a great vivid fantasy and lots of creativity in general. In my subjective opinion, I'd say you may try to bring it to light in a more taken back, clear way first. Then when your story moves in a secure way and structure, you may add the style and decoration.

Despite the criticism here, the script is noticeably an ambitious effort, which is "very" important from my sight on story.

Logline - doesn't really make much sense to me, but we'll see...

Like others I don't care about the shorting script element, but worth noting for future entries.

Bit confused with some of that. I like the fact it's contained and they are tracking someone. Bishops lines sometimes work, sometimes felt a bit off. Almost had a touch of farce to it.

For me, we needed a clearer goal and outcome.

logline is shaky

writing is fine, although I'm not crazy about some of the imagery - for example "blood falls off Garrett's face like pinballs melting to the ground."  ehhh, less is probably more there.

using the word "tastes."  some of this is a little too "try hard" for my liking.

i like the chance you took and see what you were going for, but i don't know if this was thought provoking or all that interesting to be honest.

not bad overall.

Afraid I'm with some of the others here - a bit confused on the story and why things were happening the way they were. Still dialogue and action sequences were fine-just didn't get the apocalypse connection. Ford was an interesting character- a real Tom Hardy type. I think with more pages you could have provided a bit more background to what was going on.

Good effort here, though.

Best,
Gary

I'm getting very frustrated and have to apologize to all the writers of scripts I haven't read yet, that my patience is about gone.

We start with a terrible 5 line passage and things ain't looking good.

"The sun is rising -- or setting on the horizon. It depends on where you’re seeing it from." - Really?  Is this a serious line?  Obviously, it's not "DAY" as the Slug indicates, as it's either DAWN or EVENING, but why don't you know, as the writer of this script?  Just downright dumb way to start here.

armed, rag tag, armed, WTF?

Nope, I'm sorry...this is just to much for me to get through. Way too many mistakes, extremely awkward phrasings, nonsensical dialogue and descriptions.

I'm out.  No score.

When I opened this up, I'm greeted with the dreaded words in any script narrative.

Quoted Text Everything is covered in darkness -

To which the writer then shows me that the above statement is not exactly so, as there's a guy in a fur coat in a leather chair, behind a desk, and, since he's surrounded by darkness, is transfixed on it. How so, if it is everywhere?

Quoted Text The sun is rising -- or setting on the horizon. It depends on where you're seeing it from.

I just made myself a promise. If I read anything like that again, i'm out of here.Either it rises or it sets. hoose one. It does not matter where Ford or Bishop sit. Since it's "day" it must be early morning I guess. Maybe it's high noon. All I really know is Ford ISN'T surrounded in darkness by this passage. light is light.

Quoted Text The sounds of muffled banging and shouting can be heard coming from downstairs.

I'm not downstairs yet. How do I know the sounds come from downstairs?  Where downstairs?
Also, if I can hear the shouts and bangs (is someone knocking over pots and pans, shooting a gun, what?) I don't need to be told that I can hear them.

When the door had been opened by professionals, there's a reveal of a bare chest underneath a shirt, and someone getting thier drawers pulled down, out comes the grating dialogue

I'm over and out by this time.
Sorry. Not for me..

Writer,

Well, this lost me and I found myself skimming and not finishing, sorry to say. Just couldn't figure what was going on here, or where the story was.  There was one absolute pearl of dialogue, and I want to remember it because I might just steal it one day - Bad can be fixed, fucked cannot. Great line. On yeah, mucho improper use of commas and broken words. Need to tidy that up for your next effort.

Steve

Sun rises or it sets, the day is old or new, perspective is important. Geesh, what a thing to take so much heat over.

It's subtle, too subtle, especially when it's jam-packed with nastiness. It has that great quality of sci-fi that we're looking in on a real world -- but it's tilted a little too much towards that, for me.

The emotional stakes, however, are good and clear. So this is a matter of insufficient exposition, for me. We need a little something more for the story to really play on our emotions/sense of justice.