Small World by Matthew L. Phillips - Short - For the Valentine's Day Visual Writing Challenge. 5 pages - doc, format

no takers? in case anyone was wondering this is my script
i probably put people off from reading it by not having a logline like the others but eh... its 5 pages and i really didnt want to give much away.. anyway, feedback would be appreciated, im not sure how well i did on this as i used a little bit of inserted text but i hope i still conveyed most of the story through the descriptions

so yeah.. sorry for no logline, like i said its short and i wanted it all to be a surprise

Well done Matthew. For a script that had no dialogue that was a story very well told. I loved the way the women thought the banner in the sky was for them. I also thought you didn't over do it with the letters, notes or title cards. However, in your opening descriptions you wrote, man (late 40s) and man (mid 30s). It would be more economical to write man (47) or man (35). Apart from that I thought everything was fine. Before I go, what's the story with the Valentine's Day Visual Writing Challenge? The guy who wrote "Mr. Silent" mentioned it as well.

it was just a challenge to write a short that was less than 10 pages with no dialogue and without overusing any text. We had two weeks to do it and it could be any genre but somehow had to have a valentines day theme.

Very well descritive piece, Matthew. I'm with Takeshi-san about the characters ages.

Matthew,

I read this twice. I can’t complain about the format, but the reason I read it twice was because I was confused. I liked how the women all thought it was for them, but I ended up feeling sorry for John. What did he do wrong? Where did the pictures of him and the Brunette come from?

I like the idea you have here, I just wish it were less confusing.

P.S I have a tendency to be dense, so maybe it’s just me.

i read somewhere that you should put more of a description on their age and not an exact one as it limits who could ever play the part... although i never expect to get anything prodcued i just kind of followed that rule but if its better to put an exact age ill do that in the future

tomson, obviously with it being so short it was hard to flesh out all the characters but basically i just wanted everyone in there to be connected somehow, all the reasoning for why isnt quite there but i did all i could in a short script, i kind of wanted the audience to feel sorry for John so i'm glad you did
thanks for the reads guys

Hey Matthew. I´m also a bit confused about the ending.

SPOILERS

John´s wife didn´t appreciate his gesture because she knew he was cheating on her, right? And in revenge she decided to date the pilot? Did I get it right?

Some suggestions.

-There´s no need to name your secondary characters, but find a way to adress them in a quick way. I mean:
"The man from before" Just call him "Pilot".
"The brunette lady from the beginning" Just call her "Brunette".
And so on.

-"It is a small kitchen that belongs to an apartment and not a house".
You can´t have this description under a INT. KITCHEN slug. We are supposed to "be" inside the kitchen. If it´s important to mention that the kitchen belongs to an apartment, then establish the apartment first (EXT. APARTMENT), describe it, and then cut to inside the kitchen.

-"John is facing his girlfriend JANE" but then "He leans forward to kiss his wife" This should be easy to fix.

Nothing more to add, I hope I helped.

Matt,

Hey, this is not too bad. You get points for drumming up drama. There were quite a few instances where you could have structured your paragraphs to make events clearer. A few times, it could have been made clearer which character you were even describing.

The age description thing: I have to disagree with the others on. I think it’s perfectly fine to say an age range like “early thirties.” Lots of people could fit any number of ages and it gives flexibility to producers.

Examples:

Jane is referred to as John’s girlfriend in one sentence and his wife in another.

“Surrounding her car though are several other women who all appear to be heading the same way to do the same thing.” -- All these women who are randomly sitting in traffic near each other all work at the same location? This would seem highly unlikely to me. Perhaps you should have had them seeing the banner from separate locations in traffic. Something not so coincidental.

There are several instances where you separate complete sentences with a comma. A lot of writers do this but it really only jumbles things up. Personally, I think it’s best to leave complete sentences as they are and use the comma for fragments in instances where it creates a greater or smoother flow. Sometimes linking fragments with a comma even enhances the clarity. Linking complete sentences, however, usually just creates confusion.

You need to get away from “is doing” this or “is doing” that and just write in the present tense. “Jane is looking up directly at the banner in the sky.” -- “Jane is looking up” should just be “Jane looks up.” In other words, you need to be more economical.

Good idea having a character begin to speak and get shushed. You can write shushes, though, instead of ssshhh’s.

There’s no need to say she begins (you have beings but you meant begins) to return to putting her makeup on. You can just say she returns to or even just she puts.

There is no apostrophe in the possessive of its. It would be “its tail", not “it’s tail.”

There are a few errors, like starting instead of staring, and a few places where sentences could be rearranged to be clearer, but overall, the spelling/grammar is pretty solid.

It gets a little confusing for the reader at the end. Much of this is because of aforementioned paragraph structure. You do need to tighten up your paragraph structure.

There are positives, though. Quite a few. I do like the way you strive for originality. You have a good general command of the language. It seems to me that at this point you are still searching a bit for your own style, or niche, as a writer. But it appears you are well on your way to finding it. You do strike me as a serious writer. For early work, this is actually quite good. You show a great deal of promise.

About age, I mean that if the writer is a type of person that doen't like to say its age, then he uses early 40s or late 30s, but if he is type of guy that age is not a problem for him he will be direct in exacly age.

thanks alot breanne for the feedback
i am a fairly new writer and i don't write that much because of school but it's becoming less of a hobby and more of something that I'd really like to do so im trying to find more time for it, ive only completed one full length and then this short so i know that there are alot of mistakes that i make that over time can be ironed out... also, other people have mentioned my use of comma's and things such as sentance structure, i should probably learn to fix that stuff too.
i like storys where everything is not as it seems so i tend to always put some kind of twist or some kind of event that wasn't predicted but sometimes i think i may go overboard with little explanation. Anyway, I'm enjoying putting these scripts together so hopefully I will learn to improve the little things over time. I enjoy this board as great writers like yourself are willing to read and give feedback to the newbies such as me

Mr. Z - I thought i might have left in the wife and girlfriend thing, originally she started as his wife but i wanted to show the engagement ring at the end so i changed it to girlfriend but i guess i didnt catch them all
and yes. you got the plot right. She was ignoring John all day as she knew he was cheating on him and obviously at some point had decided to cheat on him. I was just going for a little bit of irony and trying to tie everyone's storys together by having it being with pilot.

thanks for the reads
-Matt

I wasn't as confused about this story as others have said.  From the beginning where Jane receives the card you can kind of tell what's going on.  He's perky,  she's mad, it's Valentine's day...something's up.

Your first paragraph is too chunky.  You could take those 5 lines and change it to something like "A small, one-engined plane sits alone on an empty patch of asphalt in front of a plain white building.  I know where you're coming from though.  It's a rookie mistake to try and over explain things and tend to be wordy, but don't fret.

I also think you should introduce the pilot as PILOT, not MAN, because that got me lost.

INT.  KITCHEN

It is a small kitchen that belongs to an apartment and not a house.

You can chop off the "and not a house" part.  

Sorry, those two thingies just stood out for me.  On a more positive note, it was sort of a depressing story.  It's Valentine's Day and in the end our main guy was sad.  It was a nice touch though with all of the women reading the message in the sky and getting excited.  Hahaha.  Overall, easy read.  Nice work!