New Beginnings by Richard L. Sartore - Drama, Romance, Film-Noir - NEW BEGINNINGS, a romantic film noir, involves two college seniors, CHAD DEMARCO and KAREN NOLAND, committed to marriage after graduation. Near the scheduled marriage date, Chad abruptly backs out. Although Karen is shocked and devastated, she rebounds .  Chad, on the other hand, is an unmarried drinker. He’s alienated, disillusioned, pessimistic, and obsessed about not having initially married Karen. Through a series of bizarre circumstances, Chad is given a second chance to relive his past. The relationship is less than harmonious. Problems that plagued his first life, still exist. When Chad apologetically admits to Karen she had a former life, all her dreams, flashes, images, and memories of a prior a life, make sense. A key role is played by MR. CHAMBERLAND, a satanic person, who uses his power by changing past, present, and future events. The price for Chad’s return to the past is his soul. In the concluding scenes, Karen fails an attempted suicide. Mr. Chamberland returns Karen to her previous life.  However, the price is dear - her soul.  Chad's repeated failures lead to suicide, resulting in a descent into hell. There, once again, he’s reunited with Mr. Chamberland and, surprisingly, his cruel father.  NEW BEGINNINGS shows the dark, seamy, and inhumane side of human nature with cynicism and doomed love. 90 pages - pdf, format

I'm just about to download the pdf of your script. But here's my first impression based on your logline.

i think the story is:

Guy should have married girl, but backs out and then becomes a drunk. Girl marries on the rebound. Guy sells his soul to the devil to travel back in time and get another chance at love, but doesn't get redemned by this ... instead ends up in eternal damantion with his father.

I think if you are thinking about this as a spec script you might want to consider tightening up your logline. It shouldn't be a blow by blow account of the story, it should be three lines maximun that sell the core concept of the film.

If you're really serious about selling the screenplay, you should be able to explain the story in one concise sentence that also is strong enough to persuade an average movie goer to see the film. This sin't something that all writer can do themselves and sometimes it helps to have afreind that works as aa copywriter in advertising to help ... selling ideas in two sentences is pretty much the gig in copywriting.

I got to page two before giving up.

Here's why.

A screenplay has to do many things. But the most important one is to tell the visual story. This is the reason that the description to dialogue ratio is normally 2:1 and not the other way round.

The other is more difficult to explain. I spent years tachign and directing actors for a living and because of that I've developed an instinct for scripts that are written by people who understand the needs of an actor and those which aren't.

You're wriiting drama .. drama is performance driven and on the first page you've written a scene that shows no undestanding of what actors can and can't do with perormance. i wish I could explain it clearly, but it's about understading that all actions are driven from motivation and desire. So, although it's your intention to create a mystery for the audience that is unravelled by the unfolding plot, you can't inflict that on the reader. Some actor is going to have to work that scenea dn they need to know what the characters are about. When you introduce a new character you have to give the reader a sense of who they are

if you only doing this for the protagonist the script falis to do one of it's primary jobs.