An Important Package by Martin Samoylov - Short, Comedy - A delivery man must urgently bring a package into a locked house and attempts to do so with the help of a local observer.12 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hi,

Is there a reason you have a random written by name?

Quoted Text OBSERVER (50) is cleaning his lawn in a quiet, middle-class, suburban neighborhood. While cleaning, he looks around out of boredom. Suddenly- a loud and urgent-sounding knocking. Knock. Knock. Knock. The person making the noise is PACKAGE MAN (30), with a little package in his shoulder, loudly banging onto a neighbors door.

I selected this to point out all the passive writing. You can eradicate most of this by cutting back on the words ending in "ing".

No need to say "while cleaning" we already know he's cleaning.

Also no need for "Knock. Knock. Knock", again, you just told us there is knocking.

It’s very over written in the sense that you tell us the same information again, and again, and again.

The dialogue is very much on the nose. Repeat it back to yourself. No one would talk like this.

You really over use beats.

You can turn off the character CONT'S, they are unnecessary.

The house building metaphor is a bit odd.

He almost forgot ordering something 20 minutes ago, not sure that makes any sense at all.

The idea is semi decent, in the fact that his world depends on it, but it needs a better setup and execution.

Lots of awkward writing.

I think you would benefit from reading some more scripts.

All the best.

Martin

“EXT. SUBURBAN STREET BLOCK – DAY
OBSERVER (50) is cleaning his lawn in a quiet, middle-class, suburban neighborhood.”

- A useful rule of thumb to abide going forward - Don’t repeat in the prose what’s already been established in the slugline. For example, this could be shortened to:

EXT. SUBURBAN STREET BLOCK - DAY
“Quiet, middle class. OBSERVER (50)  cleans his lawn”

I assume from some of the dialogue and the prose that English may not be your first language. If so, fair play for writing something in your second language, more than what I could ever manage.

Having said that, it doesn’t excuse a fairly silly set up and pay off. I get you are trying to withhold the reveal until the end but Observer should be asking exactly what is so important about delivering this package before agreeing to break down his neighbour's door. Package Man just keeps repeating how vital it is without ever specifying...yet somehow Observer becomes convinced. It doesn’t make sense and feels weak.

Then there is the punchline itself which is just plain dumb. Again, I get what you’re going for in terms of humour but it’s still stupid, especially since  Package Man, although taking his job extremely seriously, has now damaged the property of a client and left without compensation so right there, the concept falls down.

This guy might have got a warning for not honouring the company policy, now he's getting fired...or maybe that’s the joke. If so, it’s not funny, in my opinion. Overtly stupid characters generally don't do it for me. More often than not, they're an easy way to a cheap gag.

The house building metaphor is a stretch but again, that's probably the joke too.

You need to rethink and develop this. You could keep the initial set up but try to come up with a better motivation for both characters resorting to doing what they do.

Col.

Not much to add here - was going to add notes but Warren and Colkurtz pretty much got it nailed.

A little late, but I'd like to say a big 'Thanks' for the feedback from Warren and colkutz! There was a lot of helpful stuff in there.

After having received this and other feedback I've come up with a revised and extended version of the script. The beginning is largely the same, with some changes in the writing, but there is a lot new story and even a new character added afterwards.

If anyone is interested to take a look: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EY6-wWZ2MXGamuiyGdJbAg0yhzX_UVv3/view

As always, I'd appreciate any and all feedback! Open to swaps for other shorts as well.

@Warren: that "written by" name isn't random. It's my reddit account. u/packageman777. I started sharing my sharing my scripts on reddit so that's why I use that.