A Sight For Sore Eyes by Jack Archer Lana - Short, Drama - It has been a while since Joseph Gardendale has ever came home. But when he gets a flyer for a family reunion, he takes his soon-to-become wife to the party. Shortly after Joseph now knows why he has not been back since.      A July, 2006 One Week Writing Challenge Entry - doc, format

Oh Dear!

I promised myself I would read all of the scripts submitted for the OWE.

I started yours and found so many errors of all kinds that after page two I decided to stop. I thought about it for half a day and decided to go through it and at least offer some suggestions.

I'm sorry to say that I was unable to offer any help. The problems with this story are just too many for me to even try to tackle.
"Joseph castrates on the road" I don't even understand what you mean.

I am really, really sorry that I was unable to offer you anything to help you. Maybe some of the more skilled writers here might be willing to give you a hand.

I am proud of you for actually finishing and submitting something though.

Better Luck next time.

I don't know.  There's lots of things to point out here.  I think I got the general gist of it with this guy disliking his family but eventually realized that home is where the heart is.  So, the general message is there, but grammatically it's a mess.  I'm guessing English isn't your first language.  You sound like Shakespeare, a genius in his own language but still confuses the simple minded(me).  

I want to offer you more help, I truly do, but I think more than anything else it's the grammar that really swayed me away from the story.  Like Tomson, though, I give you kudos for trying the one week writing exercise out.  Your style of writing looks like a mix of a few other people, so I can't be sure if I've ever read anything by you.

It's a nice effort.  I wish you luck in the future.

Ok. One of two things may have happened here.

1) English isn't your first language. I can relate to that.
2) You wrote this while being drunk. Unfortunately, I can relate to that as well.

Either way, I've got no excuse to avoid offering a review.

As other readers have already noticed, you've got lot of problems. I'd summarize them by saying that your writing is getting in the way of your story.

There is a story in here that could work for a short and it quite follows the challenge's rules. But grammar and format are a mess. A couple of quick suggestions:


"A BLACK SCREEN

Joseph Gardendale age 28 talks over."

This is contradictory. If the audience is supposed to be looking at a black screen (like the slug tell us) don't include descriptions of any kind in this scene. If we're looking at a black screen, we can't be looking at anything else.


"IN ON LARGE PAN SCAN we brush really close to the crowd. We see men in gulf v-neck sweaters, smoking large cigars, and drinking cognac."

Loose the camera directions; leave them for the director. Even if you plan to shoot this yourself, do know that this kind of stuff drags the reader away from the story. And right now what you need is to write your story in a simpler way. Try something like: " Men in gulf v-neck sweaters, smoke large cigars and drink cognac."

For the same reason, loose the SMASH CUT TO or any other transition.

I don't know what "SOUND AGAIN over SOUNDTRACK!" or "NO SOUND ON SOUNDTRACK!" means so I can't tell you why you have to loose it. But trust me. Loose it. Same with: "OMITTED:-C.U CUT:"

"INSIDE HOUSE" should be "INT. HOUSE"

About the story... Your protagonist's change of mind about his family seemed a bit rushed; hence the message of this script felt a little contrived. Try to flesh out a little bit more his motivations and the relation with his family.

Page 2:

FADE IN:

A BLACK SCREEN

' How can you fade in on a black screen?

Joseph Gardendale age 28 talks over.

                         JOSEPH (V.O)
' He talks over and then he's Voice Over(ing), how convenient!

But After all that has happen in my Life

' Two capitals mid sentence, it happens a lot during your dialogues, it's because of the .doc format. "Happened"

Bleh don't feel like continuing, I'm about to see Pirates of the Caribbean: DMC!
I'm a foreigner myself, work on the language, the story itself felt sort of forced around your moral, which is a nice moral but not that good of a story.

Ok, I opted to read what has already been said so I don't repeat what are probably ample comments on this one. Here's my first word.

The first thing I noticed was that you're using Word with autocorrect set to capitalize the first letter of every line, hence the first letter of each indented line of dialogue is captialized. You need to turn this function off. Tools>Autocorrect Options>Uncheck the "capitalize first letter of sentence" option.

We have several things that smack of the writer not caring about the work. Grammatical and spelling errors galore. So many, in fact, that it indicates that once you finished the first draft, you never looked at it again. Show us you care, at least a little, by reading your draft before you submit it. Some of these aren't foreign, they're just clumsy. "Joseph castrates on the road"...I did laugh.

Camera directions decorate the script from stem to stern, indicating that you may be new to the spec writing family where such things detract from the experience and most of us are wired to spot them a mile away and condemn them.

As for the story, it works to establish lots of rather sorry characters that really garner no interest. A lot of your descriptions cannot be shown in that they tell more then they show. Sorry, "hot blonde" is really not a good description. You should describe at least her age...and might throw in whether they're both naked or under the covers or something.

A lot of your dialogue was really stilted. The opening lines addressed people by relation, which is nothing short of awkward and unrealistic. Find me anyone who addresses someone as "brother-in-law." The only time I refer to my brother-in-law as such is in discussion with someone else.

My suggestion would be reread your script after you finish it out loud and see what it sounds like. If it sounds weird or you find yourself mumbling through it, you probably need to rewrite it.

This one has it's problems, mostly in the grammer department, I think Brea has pointed most of them out so no need to repeat.

Some of the dialogue was kinda weird "I saw my dad humping my cousin" Who says Humping anymore, my guess is that this writer is someone young.

you did keep to the theme so I give you props on that, and this wasn't horrible, just messy and misguided.

anyways good luck on future writing

If anyone else is thinking about reviewing this, I would like to mention that the author e-mailed me and he told me he's a freshman in Highschool and this was his first attempt at screenwriting. Just wanted to point that out so things stay on the nice side.  

This is for the author;
Even if this was your first attempt at screenwriting you can still read the other scripts submitted. It doesn't have to be a long professional review. Just tell the author if you liked it or not and why you did or did not.  

Rather than grill you on the spelling and format mistakes, I’m going to concentrate on your story.

Your narrator, Joseph, tells us what kind of people are at the Gardendale party: cheaters, liars, whores. Even though this is a short script, you will have to find ways of showing this rather than telling us.
An example would be Joseph’s mom at the bar, asking for another drink. It doesn’t seem visual because I don’t know what she looks like and I don’t see the emotion in her actions.  Maybe this woman is drunk and is getting loud or is coming on to the bartender.  Find a way to dramatize her condition and her actions.

Joseph in VO says “I hate coming here,” yet he brings his fiancee.  Why would he introduce her to such a nasty pack of misfits and deviates?  His timing is off.

To solve this, give Joseph a reason to be there and to bring Molly. Maybe it Molly’s idea to be there.  Maybe Molly insists on meeting the whole family.  This would also flesh out her character in a quick, interesting manner.

After Peter greets Joseph in a vile way, I think Joseph would not introduce his “brother-in-law” to Molly.  It would work better and faster to introduce Peter to Molly, something like:  “And this shameless piece of work is my drunk, out-of-work brother-in-law.” Something that gives Joseph a snappy comeback tied in with an introduction.

Molly should not be throwing a disgusted look at Joseph.  She should direct her gaze to the person spewing out the vile: Peter.

Under no condition should Joseph leave Molly alone with the vultures. But if he does, than consider making this Molly’s story.  Would be fun to see her meet and size up the enemies. And just how she plans to handle each one, so to speak.

Joseph doesn’t want Molly to meet his mother. But he knows how Mom gets at parties. Again, why bring Molly to this affair knowing that it brings out the worst in his family?

Molly gave me the impression of being reserved, if not shy. Then when she meets Joseph’s mother, she says “Who’s this I may ask?”  That doesn’t sound like her.  That sounds like words Mom would utter.  It rings of an attitude.  I would imagine Katherine as being judgmental, condescending. Consider reversing that dialogue.

This meeting lacks an introduction of Molly to Mommy Dearest.  And Katherine never asks who Molly is, or comments that she knows who Molly is.

If Joseph consistently leaves his fiancée to fend for herself, then make Molly the kind of person who can handle people.  Maybe she is just as self-centered or conniving as the others.  Think about creating her personality and it wouldn’t take a lot to establish this.

Maybe Molly is one of those slick-talking types, who loves to work people, a crowd, etc.

It’s awkward to call people by their respective relations opposed to their names: such as brother-in-law, baby cousin, my son…  it might work in a feature if you are establishing a specific world where the characters talk that way.  But in a short, it’s odd.

As Joseph and Molly are driving away, he tells her that he caught dad humping his cousin. Molly asks, “Is she blood related?”
Everybody in Joseph’s family is a bit off-kilter, so for Molly to ask such a weird question, well, it is peculiar.  Is Molly supposed to be as screwy as Joseph’s relatives?

When J and M return to the barbeque and Joseph reintroduces Molly to Mom as the woman he intends to marry, why is Katherine surprised? She had a conversation with Molly while J was off looking for dad. Surely, something of this would have come up in their conversation. Right?

The ending threw me a curve. It wraps up too quickly and for reasons I can’t comprehend.  I don’t understand Joseph.  He seemed grounded, but his actions – returning home and introducing his fiancée to a dysfunctional family is odd enough. I can’t fault him for getting disgusted and leaving. But to go back to the party and everything seeming hunky dory, ah, I don’t think so.  This whole story feels a little like a Todd Solandz story, but he knows exactly what he wants from the get-go.

Most will rake you over the coals for spelling, wording and format problems. No excuse for those faults. While the story has inconsistencies and lacks a certain visual drama, I won’t over-criticize you on those points.  You need to put more work into this to make it plausible – even in its own little world. At least you gave it a shot.

Pia says this is your first script. Improvement from script to script will garner respect. Learn from the critiques. Read other scripts and offer comments, even if only to point out (and be specific) what you like and/or don’t like about a story. You don’t have to give a full-on, line-by-line review. We just need to know you care enough to participate and improve.

Good luck and keep writing.

Wow, what I have to say...You try to do your job and you did anyway. How you did it is the problem here.

I'm not talking about your story itself. I understood it, but how you told it tha's the main problem. Your story was wrecked by your writting.

I hope you ask some help from our pals in here that know more than me. Don't be shamed about that ask and good luck in your next project.