The Rat by Mark (marlin1) - Short - Teddy Baxter has a big problem and no exterminator on the planet can fix it.  12 pages - rtf, format

Greetings Don,

Love the site, I will try my utmost to read and comment on others work and plan to hit the site at a min of twice a week. I firmly believe the comments others leave make you a better writer and thicken up the skin which is, of course, necessary!

Current projects I'm working on are two short story ideas which I HOPE to have at least one done this month and I finished up a third screenplay last month, which although I wouldn't wipe my .... with it has some commercial attraction that i'm crossing my fingers and toes on.

How about yourself? Do you stick to screenwriting only? If so god bless, I enjoy the weird discipline of it but it also feels like a tight pair of underwear at times and I need more room to move!!

In any event, I sincerely give you kudos for this site, I'm very glad for the ability to see others work, both the good and bad and it's a comfort to know so many of us are still out there!!

Peace


Mark

I liked the fact that Ol' Teddy the rat got his in the ending, but the script itself...Off format, some spelling errors...Descriptions are bit long and wordy, some "we sees" and audience asides (Ole Danny’s always let himself get thrown under the bus by Teddy before, no problem) Try to show, not tell. Missed some dialogue format all together..Missed some spaces between sluglines/actions/dialogue...Don't see Girl, Boss or Teddy's wife properly introduced as characters.

Punctuation/grammatical errors throughout.

Capitalized words in the 2nd line of dialogue (and some description) that is incorrect.  Ex. Pg 1 in Teddy's line:
"No way Danno. I got these so get your hand Out of your pocket."  might be "No way, Danno. I'll get these, so get your hand out of your pocket."

In the bedroom he's bellowing epitaphs? I think you might be epithets, in which case just say he swore alot, or better yet, let your character ring true and show us this bellowing, breaking up that big block of desription...

Best way to catch a mouse/rat? Peanut Butter.

Some really good business clone dialogue, but the whole successfull businessman being scared and eaten by rats...Didn't quite buy it.
Good luck with your other projects, especially the one that has some "commercial interest". Make sure you know they're legit though, as lots of scammers target would-be writers..

Hope this is helpful to you, and best of luck...BW

Thanks Wolfe,

I enjoyed your feedback very much. Ya- the format was piss poor, no excuses but I winged it on word before I had mm but it was just lazy. Jeez, everybody has spellcheck for christs sake!

Thanks also for the comments on the story itself and they were spot on in all measures. It's appreciated greatly.

Best wishes in all future things,

Marlin

Hey Marlin.

My first thought is: Good concept, nice story, and overwritten.

Your descriptions need to be broken up. Because they are long, the story seem long to read. And a reader of scripts to buy will just shit pile your script on that fact alone. Make your descriptions 2 to 3 lines and no more than 4.

And you commented above about spell check. Note: Spell check will only catch spelling errors. Sometimes, most times, we have further errors that are not noticed by spell check. For me, I need to physcially read my script away from the computer screen to catch things I don't see at first. You may want to keep that in mind.

Spencer

Hi Spencer,

Thanks very much for taking the time to read and comment. Yes, I totally need to trim the description blocks down and the 2-4 suggestion is great. I have actually started printing and reading the last few things I've done and that certainly helps tremendously!

thanks again,

peace

mark