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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    Unproduced Screenplay Discussion    Short Scripts  ›  Returning the Favor Moderators: bert
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  Author    Returning the Favor  (currently 1242 views)
Don
Posted: March 4th, 2007, 1:16pm Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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Returning the Favor by Steve Meredith (srusteve09) - Short, Drama - The kindness of strangers… 6 pages - pdf, format


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dogglebe
Posted: March 5th, 2007, 8:45am Report to Moderator
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I found this short to be extremely choppy.  You have the main character going from one scene to another, with each one ending with someone doing someone else a favor.  There was no flow.

Characterization, I thought, was poor and the dialogue seemed rushed and too on the nose.  The characters say exactly what they have to say for the story and that's it.  You need more than that.

Read some scripts and see how other people flesh out dialogue.


Phil
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ReaperCreeper
Posted: March 10th, 2007, 4:32pm Report to Moderator
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Also, this was sort of a rip-off of pay-it forward. I read it expecting something different, hoping I was mislead by the title and the logline, but I was let down.

The characters sounded like robots, not because of the words they said but because they were saying  _exactly what the audience needed to hear_ to understand the story.

And as for the characterization thing Phil said: Phil, I don't know how one could *really* develop a character in 6 pages. It's possible, I guess, but pretty damn tough.

There were some technical mistakes too. For one, sluglines should be written like this: "INT/EXT. SOMEPLACE - NIGHT/DAY" NOT "INT/EXT-SOMEPLACE-NIGHT/DAY"

Don't put ":"s after the characters' names.

I really didn't like this script. I never could enjoy it at all.

I say, Steve, you should scrap this script, read others on the site until you are trained better, and start again fresh.

I'm not trying to diss you as a writer, I'm just saying you could be A LOT  better than you are (I am, of course, basing this opininon on this short alone), that's all.

I hope you do better next time


--Julio
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dogglebe
Posted: March 10th, 2007, 7:08pm Report to Moderator
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Quoted from ReaperCreeper
And as for the characterization thing Phil said: Phil, I don't know how one could *really* develop a character in 6 pages. It's possible, I guess, but pretty damn tough.


I'm going to disagree with you on the characterization comment.  You can develop characters in a very short script; you just have to keep the number of characters down to a minimum.


Phil

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ReaperCreeper
Posted: March 10th, 2007, 8:59pm Report to Moderator
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Yup. Like I said, I knew there might be a possibility. Another thing is to have and build one, maybe two main characters in a story and have minor characters only when they're necessary for the plot or even the main character to develop. However, those minor characters all should serve their purpose to the story, maybe such as causing a huge change on the protagonist, or making him discover something new about himself, otherwise they're just "there".

At least that's the way I did it with my script, Insanity Outcome. In a feature this might be a huge no-no, but I think it's the best way to go with shorts.

Still, this script is half the size of mine, so it'd be even harder to pull off. Hell, I'm not even sure if I pulled it off myself.

But we're getting off-subject here. We should be commenting on Returning the Favor here!


--Julio
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Death Monkey
Posted: March 11th, 2007, 11:05am Report to Moderator
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Yeah, I sorta found this short involuntarily funny at times. You know the catchphrase thing. "Just returning the favour". Pretty hokey for my taste.

Like others have said. The characters don't talk like humans do. They don't even feel like humans.

I'm gonna join the others in suggesting you read some more scripts and let this one go.


"The Flux capacitor. It's what makes time travel possible."

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