Outsiders by Matthew Nsubuga (majorgeneral316) - Series, Sci Fi - This is the pilot episode of a graphic novel style series which depicts the story of a group of heroes, given mutated powers after a mysterious bus crash. The first episode focuses on Jason. A normal college boy who wakes up from a year long coma with all his friends disappeared an people after him. 46 pages - pdf, format

Hey thanks for the post.

Just would like some feedback. I am a new writer and I am still getting to grips with all the rules.

I think the pilot is quite interesting and original because there are not that many show of the same type (that I can think of).

Injoy the read.

Hey Matthew,

Interesting idea for a series.  Thought it could use some refining you have the basic plot down and I could definitely see it working.  From the logline I thought it would be like Heros - but it wasn't.


First off, I have to say that you should proof read your work much better than you do. There were a lot and I mean a lot of words that were misused in here.  Homonyms.  Words that sound the same but mean different things.  Your biggest offender your and you're, second biggest there and their, but there were others.  These were even on the first page and if I were a reader I wouldn't have made it past that page.

Next up, tenses.  You kept going into past tense.  Saying someone stood when someone stands there, or sat when sits.  You need to keep your tense present and active.  This gives an immediacy and life to your words and makes the read much more interesting.

You start out with this whole Facebook thing and then you just drop it.  Maybe carry it through to the rest of the story or use a different hook.  

As far as plot goes, I'm not too sure about the whole robbery thing.  What could they possibly expect to get from a group of people that can't afford to drive, fly, or take the train?  It just didn't make sense from a robbery perspective.  Maybe give them another motive.  

I'm not sure exactly what is happening to these people and I think since the rest of the series hangs on this you need to give me a bit more to go on.  You don't need to give me all the answers, but you need to give me enough so I can come up with some real questions, not just WTF?  

Like what does his father have to do with this?  You were intending on covering that?  You didn't just put it in there to give him something to wake up to, did you?  Or who are these bad guys?  Are there more?  Maybe we should get more of a glimpse of the good guys than just the girl.  Oh and did EVERYONE on the bus end up with these powers?

Overall, you did ok with this - not bad for a beginning screenwriter and we all have to start somewhere.  Keep writing.

Thanks for reading. I did this one a couple if months and I understand your complaints. The series is meant to start with a double header so that's why so many questions are drawn up.

The facebook thing was really meant to introduce the characters and their personalities.

Yeah the tenses are really bad and the Homonyms, I will definetly learn from this mistake and make sure I don't mix them up.

A bus is filled up with around fifty people. There is a lot of money to be made from hijacking it and robbing everyone.

The father was really a vision, a sign not really anything more. Yeah everyone on the bus did get powers.

All in all I feel I should of not left answers not told, but I wanted the reader to want to read the next episode - get hooked.

Really appreciated.

Any more feedback would be really helpful.

Thanks

MG

Before you post in anymore of your own script-threads asking for feedback, try the script review exchange board - or maybe comment on some scripts around here if you haven't already.

Hello, Majorgeneral316. I've finished reading your script and I apologize for not getting to it sooner.

Let's see, we start with comedy/drama only to switch to suspense before being confronted with an invincible teenager fighting a shape shifter and being saved by a werewolf. Quite a story arc in just 46 pages! There are many directions the story could go thanks to the wealth of characters and the fantastical nature of the story.

The buildup throughout the first act was slow and deliberate. I liked how you took the time to develop the whole group, which made their apparent deaths quite a shock. I thought the slow build could have worked better, however, if the opening teaser didn't give away the climax of the first act. I understand you wanted to kick off the story with a bang, but I think it only served to undercut the suspense.

You should think about replacing the teaser with something which could hint at the craziness which happens in the third act. For example, you could have Shadow or Canine narrate a sequence which dwells upon the themes you seek to explore or which touches upon the fantastic characters we will meet during the series.

I thought the story progressed logically for the most part, but there was one major question which stuck with me at the end of the story: Why didn't Shadow go after Jason when he was in a coma for an entire year? Shadow repeatedly mentions how dangerous Jason is, which only serves to shine a brighter spotlight on this question. The easiest way around this is for someone (Canine?) to state Shadow can only attack those who are conscious and that Jason was safe as long as he was in a coma.

Here are the things I noticed as I went through your script:

Page 1: "A women clutches" should be "A WOMAN clutches." (Woman should be capitalized because she is a new character.) You refer to two different people in this scene as Man, which could lead to confusion. I would generally avoid using just Man or Woman to refer to a character. You don't have to give them names but you could give them descriptive titles. The woman in this scene, for example, could be called Young Mother. Two of the paragraphs on the page are five lines long. As a general rule, you should not use more than four lines in a paragraph.

Page 2: Jason is listed as being eighteen-years-old on the first page. Now, just four hours earlier, you've listed him as a full year younger. How old are college students on your side of the pond, anyway? I only ask because the typical college students in North America are between eighteen and twenty-two, which makes the students in the story younger than I would think. I don't believe you've used "inventively" correctly. Did you mean "attentively" instead? I'm guessing "Michael groans" is supposed to read "Jack groans." "Everyone else laugh" should be "Everyone else laughs." The line "the game that join all" should be "the game that joins all." Kevin's line should end with a question mark.

Page 3: Kevin's first line should end with a question mark. "That facebook ting" should be "That Facebook thing." (I assume "ting" was a misspelling and not slang, as I couldn't find any other use if it in the script.) Jack's second line should have a question mark. Unless this is a character quirk, "shouldn't of" should read "shouldn't have" or "shouldn't 've." Kevin's last line should have a question mark.

Page 4: "He's your guys friend" should read "He's your guys' friend." Shanice's first line should have a question mark. Reggie's first line should end with a question mark.

Page 5: "Jason manages to Shepard" should read "Jason manages to shepherd." The phrase "but still their is a sense" should read "but there is still a sense." Jason's last line should have a question mark.

Page 6: Reggie's second and third lines and Jason's fourth line should end with question marks. "You new all it could do" should be "You knew all it could do."

Page 7: Candice's name should be written in all caps when she is introduced. "Your in my Philosophy class" should read "You're in my Philosophy class."

Page 8: "I'm Joking" should be "I'm joking." "Oh Yeah" should read "Oh yeah." You can remove the semicolon in Reggie's line as it's not necessary.

Page 9: The word "two's" should be "twos." The phrase "nine to five" should be "nine-to-five." Mr. Thompson's second line should end with a question mark. The phrase "eye balls" should be "eyeballs."

Page 11: The period in Jason's first V.O. line should be a comma.

Page 12: Jason's first, second, and last lines and Reggie's first line should end with question marks. The name "new era" should be "New Era."

Page 13: Jason's first line and Michael's line should end with question marks.

Page 13 and 14: You include several references and give lines to a character named Michael. Was this Jack's name in an earlier draft?

Page 15: Shanice's last line is improperly formatted.

Page 17: The line where you introduce the Black Male uses the word "black" three times in quick succession and reads rather awkwardly. I would suggest rewriting this line.

Page 18: The word "stupidity" should be "stupidly." Instead of naming Jones here, I would name him when he first appears and answers his cell phone on the previous page. You refer to Jack's character as Michael once again.

(Continued below.)

Page 19: "Jessy collects money of" should read "Jessy collects the money from." Kevin's first line and Reggie's second line should end with question marks.

Page 20: I would phrase Jason's line as, "S***! Reggie, man, just give him your stuff!" Jessy's line should end with a question mark.

Page 21: Two of the sluglines are missing the hyphen between the location and the time of day. Jason's first line and Kevin's line should end with question marks. There is another reference to Michael instead of Jack.

Page 22: Jason's first, fourth, and fifth lines should end with question marks. There is another slugline missing a hyphen. GIRLS VOICE should read GIRL'S VOICE.

Page 23: The first slugline is missing a hyphen.

Page 24: Jason's second line should end with a question mark.

Page 25: Jason's second line should end with a question mark.

Page 26: Smith's second line and both sentences in Michael's line should end with question marks.

Page 27: If you're referring to the brand, "Kentucky fried chicken" should be "Kentucky Fried Chicken." The phrase "will sought something" should read "will sort something."

Page 28: Mary's second and third lines should end with question marks.

Page 29 and 30: The conversation Smith has with Jason seems a little too blunt and dispassionate, especially the way he casually tells his patient he'll be dead in a month. Furthermore, wouldn't Smith's curiosity lead him to order more tests and call in experienced professionals to study the anomalies in Jason' blood? After all, there are thousands of scientists in the world working on tissue and cell degeneration who would pay through the nose just to get a blood sample to study.

Page 31: The phrase "down stairs" should be "downstairs." The line describing Jason's smile reads rather awkwardly to me. You may want to rephrase it. When Jason calls Shanice, it doesn't seem natural for him to talk first before she even has the chance to say hello. The phrase "your awake" should read "you're awake."

Page 32: "You to" should be "You too." Jason's second and third lines are missing question marks. I know what you were trying to do with Jason' conversation with Shanice, but it didn't quite work the way it should have. Far from not wanting to see him, Shanice should have been quite determined to draw Jason out to an isolated location where Shadow could attack. At the very least, she should have confirmed where he would be so as to let Shadow know.

Page 34: The phrase "in he's pockets" should be "in his pockets." The phrase "pitch black" should be "pitch-black." I would use the front room slugline once Jason and his family enter the home. "It's too cramp" should read "It's too cramped."

Page 35: Jason's fourth line is missing a question mark. The phrase "a black whole" should be "a black hole."

Page 36: "I can't here you" should read "I can't hear you." Jason's third line should end with a question mark.

Page 36 and 37: You stopped listing Jack's lines as being V.O.

Page 37: Jack's question about how they all survived should end with a question mark.

Page 39: The word "mum's" doesn't need to be capitalized.

Page 40: "You see your lucky" should read "You see, you're lucky." How much time has passed? If the party's over, how long has the fake Michael spent in the bedroom with Jason?

Page 41: Shadow's line seems superfluous and unnecessary to me.

Page 42: "Your pathetic" should be "You're pathetic." Shadow's first line should end with a question mark. "Your going to sleep" should read "You're going to sleep." The phase "your families" should be "your family's."

Page 43: The phrase "your too late" should read "you're too late." Shadow's second line is missing a question mark.

Page 45: "This is my though" should read "This is my fault."

Page 46: The word "Justice" should be "justice."

As I mentioned in the Felony thread, I would capitalize the first appearance of all characters including those in the background. Remember to watch your spelling and grammar, write in the active voice throughout, and watch for those question marks. You also need to make sure you don't use a homophone of the word you intended to use, such as writing "your" when you meant to use "you're."

I hope this feedback helps you, Majorgeneral316, and god luck with you script.

Hey,

Thanks Abel for the feedback, really appreciated. I will use all of it whilst I write a second and much more improved second draft. I hope to cut out all the schoolboy era's I make and clean up some of the inconsistencies in the story.

There are some parts of the story which haven't been revealed. It is meant to be a double header, but I suffed a but of writers block, writing the second episode.

But I hope to have the 2nd draft 1st episode and the 1st draft second episode, up here as soo as possible, and the much more of the story will become clearer.

With the start, yeah, I wanted it to start of as a banger to engage the reader straight away, and keep them reading, but your suggested start could be better and I will take it into consideration.

I wrote this one, six months ago, when I was dogged with a lot of grammer problems.

Anyway thanks again Abel.

MG