Rip Park by J.P.S. - Short, Horror - Peace Park has many missing people. But to make matters worse, it seems there may be a psycho carrying a screwdriver trying to nail every victim that crosses his path in Peace Park. 34 page short. - doc, format

Yeah...this is the first short script I wrote.

I'd appreciate it if someone reveiwed it for me.

I'll go ahead and take a look at it. I'll give you a full review once I finish.

Okay done reading this. Now since this is your first script, I'm going to go easy on you...

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

Now first of all, before I say anything else, this description made me laugh so hard, my face turned red...that is if you are strange like me:

"Rachel screams bloody murder as she watches her date getting screwed."

I just thought that was hilarious. I mean I know what you meant, but that also meant something else to me.


ANYWAYS back to the script:

Your format is kind of weird because in your dialogue when it moves down to another line when it can't fit, it seems to capitalize the beginning of the words like it's a new sentence. Just move the margin bars and you will be fine.

The dialogue is not as great as I thought it would be. Try fixing that up, oh, and, you don't need to have dialogue for when someone screams.

Suddenly SHERIFF JOHN HYDE becaomes SHERIFF BURKE? I think you need to change the name from John Hyde to John Burke to get that straight. And then suddenly he gets nailed in the back of the neck when waiting for the killer to come and he dies, right? But he comes back at the end of the script to hand Margo the telephone. You need to change that also.

Now I'm not a mom, but I don't think I would want to have my son watch me be bait for a killer. Hell, I wouldn't even WANT to be bait for a killer. But I guess it keeps the movie going.

Some of the dialogue and description gets repeated. You don't need to do that.

Is this a handheld screwdriver or is a power drill? I think it's a power drill since you say it "roars" on the phone.



Overall this was a good script. The part I liked most was when Margo was running away from the killer and she ran into the apartment and found out that Gloria was dead. It kept me reading. OH THE SUSPENSE!

Nice job. Just work on it a little more and it will be great. Keep writing!

Sean

I know...when Don just posted up the script - I noticed all the lines "...watches as her date gets screwed." I was like MY GOD I need to rewrite as QUICK as possible. And...yeah...I know what it meant...my bad. Anyways, I'll fix that.

There is A LOT of errors. I'll have to fix that. And the formatting, I need to fix that again.

I guess I'm laughing now at my dialogue.
I guess it is a power drill since it does roar on the phone.

Thanks for reveiwing, I'm gonna fix up my script. I appreciate it.

Lol no problem. Yeah I just started cracking up at that line. I would love to read what you've fixed up once you have finished. This was a good script.

It's your first, so I'll try to be nice.  Keep in mind what I'm saying is to try and help you for future work.  SPOILERS WITHIN

To start, the concept wasn't anything exciting.  Mysterious killer going around murdering people...it's been done.  The fact that he has a screwdriver I think highlights this piece.  When you strengthen your writing skills you can make the murder scenes more gruesome and detailed, that way it will reach out to at least a certain group.

I can get by most of the spelling and grammatical errors, but don't be lazy with the capitalizing.  You wrote this in Word and there is a way to fix it, but if you can't find it, at least go back and put the letter to lowercase, otherwise you're basically giving all of your characters poetry.  Okay, one big spelling thing, BRA, not braw. hahahaha

You tend to be too wordy in your descriptions.  

"Rachel is still staring is disbelief. She is so shocked and horrified, she can’t even move. She just stands there, looking so shocked"  You could really just keep the first line and cut everything else.  The third line is exactly the same as the second.  

On page 6 when we're introduced to Hyde and Burke, well, they stink.  It's nice to give them a sense of humor, but you make them sound dumb.
BURKE: You don’t think it is some Summer vacation getaways do you?
MONROE: Sheriff Hyde, this is 2005. They are not those teenagers Back in the late eighties.

First off, how did these guys know that the teens went to the park?  You don't actually mention how.  Second, summer vacation getaways?  Tommy and Julia are in school, so I don't think it's summer vacation.  You gotta make your dialogue fit the story.

BURKE: A bloody nail. Can’t we Accuse that as murders?
MONROE: Did we find the bodies yet?You know John, for a sheriff,You sure are clueless and Oblivious.

At this point the reader is just annoyed with these guys.  They obviously don't know their job and have no idea as to what they're doing.

Tommy has some moments of spunk, but all of the characters lack personality and are overall pretty dull.  You gotta make them fun, give them some nice dialogue, make them stand out.  You could switch the roles of Julie and Margo and everything would be the same, that's how one dimensional they are.

And yeah, sometimes the dialogue is just bad.  

MARGO: That is why I wanted you To take Tommy in the car.What if he gets taken?

What kind of mom says that?  Sure it's at the back of her mind, but no mother actually comes out and says it.  I guess what I've learned is that you don't want to state the obvious.  If a guy gets his hand cut off you don't want him to say "My hand got cut off! ahhh!"  Just an example.  

The roar of a screwdriver?  This happens many times but I have no idea what it means.  Do you mean like a drill or something?

A masked figure comes out and scares her in broad daylight.  Actually you said it was nighttime, but I assume it's a typo because the laws of time wouldn't allow it.  Again, this would never happen.  This killer obviously knows his stuff, so he's not going to walk around in broad daylight in a mask scaring people.  I ASSUME this guy was the killer because he's also shown in Margo's office.

Julie kicks her boyfriend?  Nice gal.  You lean too much into the basic teen slasher at this point.  The innocent girlfriend walking through the park at night then her jackass boyfriend comes out of nowhere and scares her, and of course, they both die.  Please, PLEASE, avoid this in future stuff.  It's torture to watch and torture to read.  "Whatever.  Do you believe in that shit?" Well, it was on the TV and they found the bodies.  You make it sound like a myth here.

You didn't really explain who--or what--the killer was at the end.  Margo said "what is this creature?" The payoff wasn't really anything incredible.  It wasn't anyone they knew and it wasn't anything supernatural...it was just...a guy killing people for no apparent reason.

You could have made their father the killer...that would have been a cooler payoff.  So yeah, don't be discouraged by what I'm saying.  I really disected this so you don't make the same mistakes in future work.  For a first script, it isn't half bad.  You don't need the camera angles but you didn't make a habbit of using them, so just eliminate them all together in the next one.    Your format is good for the most part.  Try centering the dialogue and fix the capitals.  I know it's a bitch to center in Word, I do it by tabbing which is actually the long way, but I think if you just put on the center flush it'll do it for ya.

Overall, not bad for your first work.  I've read shtuff from young folk on here that was pure crap and didn't even looked like they tried and what kills me is that even after countless threads of feedback they don't improve.  So be proud of what you got here, it's a nice start to what can hopefully be a good skill for you.  Good job!

The "Burke and the Monroe" talk is really flawed and the dialogue is real dumb and I'm making a rewrite, so I'm gonna fix it.

The screwdriver thing...thedeadwalk2nite told me about that, and I guess I'm going to change it to a drill so it will work out more. And Julie and her boyfriend...yes, I will avoid it in the future.

I was thinking about making the killer the father when I was rewriting it, but that may be a spoiler now, but I'll change it anyways because the father is the minor character and I'd like every character have a use in the script. I think I stated the motive of the killer, but I guess it just doesn't click why he killed random people. I guess I didn't explain the killer that well cause I wanted him to be a scary image, but that would leave a huge plothole.

I'm gonna rewrite this and try to fix all of it up.

Greg, I really appreciate the reveiw. Thanks.