All The Good Ones by Jentri Chancey - Drama - A seventeen year-old small town girl, Story, falls for a twenty year- old, eccentric college boy, Billy, in her hometown. When they decide to move to Austin, TX together, Billy’s addiction to drugs and a steady past leads to the quick demise of a perfect love, resulting in paranoia, sexual confusion, and infidelity. While Billy is a whimsical dreamer, faced with internal demons, Story’s blinded optimism keeps her believing that she can change him. His plans for them include traveling around the world and visiting his birthplace. When multiple tragedies provoke Billy to proclaim his freedom from Story once and for all, she feels compelled to participate in the life style that inevitably tears them apart.  111 pages - pdf, format

A spec script should, ideally, be a quick, easy read. With this in mind you might want to shorten sentences.

For example: on pg 12 you wrote, "slowly, she reciprocates the affection by snuggling up close to him and touching his arm.

You could trim seven words from this sentence with little or no loss of meaning.

"She riciprocates, snuggling up close, touching his arm."

Also, you shouldn't include camera shots -- we see, we hear, etc. There are three reasons not to do this. 1) anything that's on the page, given that it's a screenplay, will, by definition, be seen or heard. That said, it's redundant. 2) It's not your job. It's the directors. And 3) Again, in the interest of a quick, easy read, you do not want to employ unnessary words.

Which brings me to your descriptives regarding bit players. Is it, in terms of the story, important to know that the hispanic child's mother is in her late 40s with short, black hair and a chunky build? Is it important that she be hispanic? It might be, but given that you didn't bother to name her, I doubt it is. If it isn't critical to the story, it shouldn't be on the page.  

The above comments aside, you're, imo, a competent writer, but a wordy one. I enjoyed many of the visuals. For example, the one on page seven that lets us know Billy is trippin'. Nice.

Nonetheless, I stopped reading on page thirty. There wasn't enough conflict or tension to hold my interest. There simply wasn't anything that grabbed me.

Seth

I have to agree with Seth on just about everything he touched on. Like Gordon Gekko once said, "Brevity, for lack of a better term, ladies and gentlemen, is good." Or whatever he said. I don't really remember.

And in reference to the character having been described as "Hispanic", I'm always confused as to why writers use such a hazy -- and often, lazy -- discription. I understand why you have a Hispanic character -- the setting of New Mexico, home to a rather large Hispanic population of various diasporatic orign makes that obvious. But how could someone look Hispanic? It's like saying, "He looked like a barista." It's very obtuse. Remember, the term Hispanic was invented during the '70s as a ethnic label, not as a race, and definitely not something to portray someone's skin color. The fact is Hispanics come in all skin colors of the rainbow, to use a dated hippie saying rather liberally. The same goes for usage of the terms "African-American," "Asian," "Middle-Eastern," "Mexican," "Puerto Rican," "Anglo," and so forth.

I don't mean to knock you, author, personally; This really is a shout out to everyone who's posted on this site. and I don't mean to play the role of the know-it-all line judge; I've just seen the above terms used all too often in scripts. And I find it funny that so-called "White" people are rarely given this special descriptive modifier; as if we are just to assume. Personally, I feel that "ethnic" descriptions should be left out completely, or that every character should be given one.    

Dear Seth, thank you so much for the commentary. This is the first complete screenplay I've written so I'm grateful for all constructive criticism you've offered.