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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    Unproduced Screenplay Discussion    Horror Scripts  ›  Del Lado de Los Muertos Moderators: bert
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  Author    Del Lado de Los Muertos  (currently 2280 views)
Don
Posted: May 3rd, 2009, 2:48pm Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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Del Lado de Los Muertos by Joseph Cahill (medstudent) - Horror - When the end of the world arrives which side of the wall will you be on? A father and son, two of the few remaining survivors of a once bustling metropolis, are tasked with protecting the remaining survivors by ensuring those that die stay dead. 111 pages - pdf, format


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Revision History (1 edits)
Don  -  August 13th, 2009, 7:29pm
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Dreamscale
Posted: May 4th, 2009, 1:52pm Report to Moderator
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Joseph, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be able to continue past page 2.  Just way too many issues going on here, and it’s really a tough, irritating read.  I took notes as I went along.  Hope they help.

Bottom line is that your writing has a very odd ring to it.  Maybe English isn’t your first language?  If it is, I apologize.  So many sentence fragments that just don’t work on their own.  As I noted a few times below, many of your “sentences” need to be combined together with a comma so that they convey a complete thought.

Almost all your action is written in a passive voice, which doesn’t work in a script.  I’m talking about main verbs ending in “ing”.  You want your script to convey action and movement, and passive writing doesn’t do this.

Sorry about this. I don’t want to be too harsh, but I just can’t go on.  Best of luck to you.  Hope this helps.




First of all, fill in your title page.  Don’t have your title on your first page of your script.

Page 1
Tons and tons of passive verbiage right off the bat.

Everything but this figure’s face is being described in great detail (feet, breathing, clothing, hands, fingernails, arms, legs), which I find a bit strange.

This opening scene is written awkwardly (the phrasing is off).  You mention glass bottles, and then switch to “it” and “the bottle” (singular), which seems odd.  Short little phrases like, “The rain with it.” don’t work IMO.

There are actually numerous sentences that most likely should be combined with the sentence in front of them, with a comma, as they just don’t make sense on their own.

“Attached to the feet, RAFAEL(60’s), carries his aging body as fast as it will take him. Up the stairs towards something.” – Here’s a good example of this.  Also, the first sentence isn’t written well at all, with the way it starts.

“A young man, TOMAS(1, lies in bed shirtless. His hairless chest covered partly by an open book, The Adventures of Gilgamesh. Hides the boy’s face.

The familiar arrhythmic FOOTSTEPS of Rafael
approaching. Gets to the open room’s partially doorway.”

OK, do we need to know that first of all Tomas is shirtless and secondly that his chest is hairless?  Is that going to come into play later on?  Are we going to know how much hair each character has on their chest?  This is weird to me.  Numerous sentences in this passage that aren’t sentences.  They need to be combined to the prior sentence with a comma.  Why is the line broken after Rafael?

Page 2
Back to the feet running again.  The way you’re referencing this, it just sounds really odd.  If you’re concealing this character’s identity for some reason, I understand, but the way you’re doing it doesn’t sound right.

You’ve already intro’d The Arc, in an earlier scene, but didn’t tell us what it was.  Now you are.  Doesn’t come across correctly this way.

Is Don Rafael the same character as Rafael?  If so, what’s with the “Don”?

“Tomas isn’t happy about being left.”  Don’t tell us stuff like this.  Show us.

“of” should be “off”.

“The barefoot feet with its continuous, frantic pace. With a view of his back, the size of the man’s torso is revealed. A large, obese torso. The man’s face unseen. This is, or was, JUAN MENDOZA(50’s).

OK, here’s where I’m going to have to stop, but let’s look at this passage real quick.  In the first few lines on page 1, you mentioned his clothing, so I would assume that we had to get a glimpse of this guy, and his torso.  So we still can’t see his face, but now you’re intro’ing him as Juan Mendoza.  Why wasn’t he intro’d this way immediately?  What’s the difference?  We don’t know who this is or was whether he’s intro’d when he first appears or after he’s been running around for a minute.

Revision History (1 edits)
Don  -  May 4th, 2009, 3:24pm
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medstudent
Posted: May 4th, 2009, 3:36pm Report to Moderator
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Dreamscale,
So... does this mean I should read two pages of yours? You know, to be fair, I will read yours anyways and post a review. It will be refreshing to read a real script for a change. It is always exciting reading a professional, produced screenwriter's work.

I was expecting a beat down but, to be honest, wasn't expecting you not being able to get past page 2. Maybe a differing of styles? Maybe not. Who knows.

Anyways, to respond to a few of your points...

I am a native english speaker, in fact, I pride myself on my language skills. No offense taken.


Quoted Text
many of your “sentences” need to be combined together with a comma so that they convey a complete thought.


I hate commas. Something in a past life, maybe. Shoot, there I go writing them again. Honestly, I don't think writing a script is the same as writing a novel. I don't believe every sentence has to be punctuated with commas or be complete for that matter. Just my opinion.


Quoted Text
OK, do we need to know that first of all Tomas is shirtless and secondly that his chest is hairless?  Is that going to come into play later on?  Are we going to know how much hair each character has on their chest?  This is weird to me.


In my own wierd way I thought describing an 18-year old boy without chest hair would show that he isn't quite mature. And since you only read to page 2, having no chest hair is a major plot point. Only those without body hair survive.


Quoted Text
Back to the feet running again.  The way you’re referencing this, it just sounds really odd.  If you’re concealing this character’s identity for some reason, I understand, but the way you’re doing it doesn’t sound right.


You are right about this. While I am trying to conceal the character's face, The description and action should be more to the point. Thanks.


Quoted Text
Is Don Rafael the same character as Rafael?  If so, what’s with the “Don”?


"Don" is roughly the same as using "Mr." It is a courtesy given to older folks in certain countries. I wanted to be consistent with either using it or not using it. I obviously missed several instances. I should be consistent with this. Thanks.

Sorry you couldn't "get through it". In the future, you should reply to these review exchange posts with a disclaimer so the expecting author knows that you, due to the writer's inadequacies and inexperience, most likely won't get through the script.

Thanks anyways for the effort.

I'll post the review of your script by tomorrow.

Joseph



Revision History (2 edits; 1 reasons shown)
medstudent  -  May 4th, 2009, 3:47pm
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Dreamscale
Posted: May 4th, 2009, 3:50pm Report to Moderator
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Joseph, I was actually about to PM you and tell you not to worry about the exchange.  Since you beat me to it, I'll tell you here...don't worry about it.

I apologized up front in my comments, and did it again near the end.  I did not mean any ill will, and don't appreciate the snide remarks about "reading a professional, produced screenwriter's work."  No reason to go there.

Writing a script is defintely not like writing a novel.  And I agree, every sentence does not need to be punctuated with commas or be complete, but they need to make sense, and be in there for a reason.

BTW, this is the first time I have renigged on an agreement for an exchange, but since I renigged before you got to mine, I don't see why it should be a big deal.

I've read and reviewed 100's of scripts in here, Joseph. Many of them were abysmal.  I'm  not saying your script is abysmal or even bad.  It's just written in a "style" that I'm not going to be able to get through without taking many, many pages of notes, and I just don't have the time for that.

You know, every review is subjective and most of the time, simply someone's opinion.  Maybe what I'm saying is completely incorrect and out in left field.  Take it for what it's worth...maybe that's nothing.  I'll be very intrested in hearing what Dressel and Jonnyboy have to say.

I did not intend on upsetting or offending you, Joseph.  Again, my apologies.
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dresseme
Posted: May 4th, 2009, 4:34pm Report to Moderator
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Joseph,

I'm up to page 20 now, and thought I'd take a moment to stop and jot down my initial thoughts/notes.

First off, I have to agree with Jeff (Dreamscale) on most of what he's said.  A lot of your description is written in a passive voice, which doesn't really work.  And being that your script is about 90% description, this does pose quite a problem.  Usually I'm a pretty fast reader, but I'm finding that I'm making my way through your script a lot slower.

But being that Jeff already touched on that, I'm not really going to concentrate too much on it.  I will say, however, that you have a lot in your descriptions that flat-out don't need to be there.  Comments like "The (siren) type that gets people running indoors" (p.15) or "Should be nice and dizzy by now." (p.17)  Little asides like that that should be taken out.  I mean, we know a siren is a bad thing, we don't need to go much more into it.  Also, I've noticed you have a tendency to space your descriptions out, sometimes making them only sentence (new line) sentence (new line).  This just seems weird.

I have no problem with the story itself, and I am wondering where it is going.  You've shrouded it in enough mystery that I'm willing to keep reading so I can find out who these characters are and what they're doing.  I have to say though, because of the lack of dialogue, I don't really know a whole lot about them.  This might be what you're going for, but I have yet to see if more will be revealed as we go (their back-stories, relationship to one another, etc).

A few other notes:
p. 12 - "Tomas smiles. Satisfied."
p. 13 - "Tomas looks at his father."
p.14 -  "Rafael looks down."  "The priest sighs".  "A light rain begins"  " They leave"
p.18 - "Rafael reaches out..."
(The above are all places where you accidentally put description in your dialogue.  An easy fix.)

Also, you introduce Juan early in the script but then keep referring to him as "The Man".  Why?  and then you re-introduce him on page 7.

Overall, like I said, the script needs some work on the description, especially seeing as that seems to be the focus of the script.  I won't comment again until I finish the script, but I just wanted to let you know my initial thoughts, as I already had a lot to say by just page 20.
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Dreamscale
Posted: May 4th, 2009, 7:24pm Report to Moderator
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Joseph, you made me feel bad, so I decided to read your script, start to finish and give some feedback.  I decided that there was no way I was going to be able to take notes as I read, so I’m just going to go over a few things.  Most feedback is like this anyway, so I’m sure you won’t care either way.

OK, I’m not really sure where to begin, because there really is a lot I want to say, but I don’t want to offend you, put you down, or piss you off.

As I said originally, your writing style is quite strange, IMO.  I’ve never come across a script like this with so many weird fragments that just don’t mean anything and seem so out of place.  Because of this (and other issues, which we’ll get to in a few minutes), this proved to be an unreal chug of a read.  Probably the longest 86 pages I’ve ever read.  Part of this is because I had to continually stop and try to figure out what I just read, or what a line was supposed to mean.

As Dressel mentioned, this is seriously like 90% action/description prose, and maybe 10% dialogue.  Again, other than a silent movie, I’ve never came across so little dialogue. This is another reason for the slowness of the read, as dialogue is usually quick to read, and broken up, making it easy to follow.

But the big problem with the prose is that it just doesn’t say much of anything, and is bludgeoningly repetitious.  So much detail about things that have absolutely nothing to do with anything appears again and again.  Maybe there was some symbolism in here that you were going for that went over my head, but anyway you slice it, it was a brutally slow read for me.

The passive writing was extreme as well.  It makes a slow story that much slower.  On top of the passive verbiage, you had many instances in which you used present tense and past tense verbs.  Other times, you’d mix singular and plural references for the same thing.

In terms of description, I was quite lost with locales and distances between them.  At first, you made it seem like this gas station was a huge trip…even by van.  But later, characters go back and forth between the town, the gas station, and the ranch house via bike, horse, on foot, and even pushing a shopping cart!  And one of these travelling characters was a little girl!  So, I just have no clue what the place looked like and/or how far apart everything is from each other. It seemed like the gas station and ranch house were “outside” the wall, but now I’m not so sure.

Also, as Dressel noted, you used a ton of asides, and they never let up.  IMO, this is completely wasted space.  Every now and then, they can be cute, funny, witty, whatever, but when they’re present on just about every page, they are extremely annoying.

If you pulled out all the completely unnecessary and repetitive lines of prose, I think you’d be down to 60 or so pages, which means to me, that there wasn’t much going on here.  Thinking back to the story, I’m pretty sure I’m right, because not much happened…or was happening.  It was so slow, and I’m sorry, but I literally fell asleep 3 times while reading.  Everything was so dark, depressing, and serious.  The rain was mentioned at least 50 times, and probably took up more than an entire page if you actually went back and counted the lines that referenced it over and over.  There wasn’t any humor or bright spots to change the tone at all, and because of that, it just came across as so monotonous.

In the 2nd half of the script, you began using flashbacks, but you didn’t label them as such, so it was always tough to figure out where we were or what the Hell was going on.  In the finale, you went crazy with these back and forth scenes and it totally took me out of the action that was taking place.

Now, you did bring some good conclusions to the various story arcs in the end and the big reveal was interesting, and I definitely didn’t see it coming.  It gave the script a much “bigger” feel to it, and I do think you wrapped things up nicely.  It was just way too long a chug to get to it, and even though I appreciated it, the payoff wasn’t nearly worth the long haul it took to get there.

Joseph, I’m not sure what level this script is at, as in early first draft, or finished product.  But wherever it is, I seriously suggest going back over this with a fine toothed comb and clean it up.  See if you feel it reads smoothly…and easily.  See if it makes sense.  See if there are portions that can be cut out that won’t change anything at all.  If you do cut this down, you’ll probably come to the conclusion that you need to add some new parts to it.  I think it definitely needs more…and the more I’m talking about is both action and dialogue.  I feel that it’s sorely lacking in both categories.

OK, so there you have it.  I know it’s never a pleasant thing to get a less than stellar review, but everything I’ve said here is meant to help.  It’s meant to help you as a writer and this script in particular.  I hope I haven’t come across as too harsh, and that at least some of what I’ve said will help.

Best to you, Joseph.
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dresseme
Posted: May 4th, 2009, 7:46pm Report to Moderator
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Joseph,

Ok, finished.  I went back and looked over Jeff's review, and once again, I agree with a lot of what he said.  

I will say, however, that I do feel there really is a story here, it just needs to be fleshed out a bit more while you work on the descriptions.

First off, you really do need to go through your script with a fine toothed comb, weeding out the asides (like "A little kid trapped.." (p.35) and "A protective measure..." (p.62)) because they provide nothing to the description.  For example, when you say the window's been nailed shut, you don't need to say the whole "protective measure bit, because we understand that already.  Same thing with the "little kid" thing.  We understand that about his character, we don't need the aside.  These kind of things would be OK for a novel, but not in a script.

On the plus side, I think you've got a lot of good imagery in the script; the scene with all the dead pigeons sticks out foremost in my mind.  You clearly care about this script being visually appealing, but you really need to spice it up a bit.  There are SEVERAL scenes of people walking around, inspecting their environment, only to have something jump out at them.  This gets, as Jeff said, repetitive.

As few things I didn't understand as well:  Why didn't Andres just kill Nena?  I don't get why one minute he had to get her to the church, but the next minute he's willing to let her be killed by the lost souls.  And speaking of Andres, I feel like his character needs a better introduction.  He just appears, shrouded in mystery (and we don't get any dialogue either!)   I feel like Andres represents a lot of what's wrong with the script; in that we don't have backstories on anyone, and EVERYTHING is shrouded in mystery.  It kind of drags the story down a bit.

All that being said, I would like to re-iterate that I feel like there's a good story to work with in here, it just needs to be fleshed out with some more action, dialogue and backstory.  As it stands right now I don't know a single thing about any of these characters, and I'm not sure why I should care about them.

Hopefully this all makes sense, I know i have a tendency to kind of ramble.  Let me know if you need clarification on anything.  Good luck with further drafts.
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Dreamscale
Posted: May 4th, 2009, 8:09pm Report to Moderator
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I wanted to post 1 more thing, and Dressel beat me to it.  I totally agree that there does seem to be a "good" story, buried somewhere inside here.  The finale and reveal make this evident.  But the writing and plodding nature makes it pretty much incoherent.

Got to agree with Dressel again, in that the scene with all the dead pigeons does come across as visually "cool"...and memorable.

Sorry to dwell so much on the negatives, because it is apparent that you have thought this out and wanted to tell a tale "your way". I just don't think the style you chose to write this works for the subject material.

I, too, am available for further questions, help, whatever.

Keep at it, Joseph, and best to you!
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medstudent
Posted: May 5th, 2009, 10:17am Report to Moderator
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Dressel,

First, thanks for reading and giving feedback. I appreciate it.


Quoted Text
I'm finding that I'm making my way through your script a lot slower.


This is definitely a problem with the script. Need to find a way to speed it up in places.


Quoted Text
I will say, however, that you have a lot in your descriptions that flat-out don't need to be there.  Comments like "The (siren) type that gets people running indoors" (p.15)


I´ll have to disagree with you here. There many different types of sirens. Police, Fire, Bomb raid sirens. All of these have a very distinct meaning. I think introducing a siren in a script needs clarification on what type.


Quoted Text
Also, I've noticed you have a tendency to space your descriptions out, sometimes making them only sentence (new line) sentence (new line).  This just seems weird.


The description is spaced out to allow the reader (supposedly) to read each page at a minute a page. If I didn't space out the action lines like that, there would be huge chunks of description/action. IMO this makes for a slower read. And since this is already a slow read...


Quoted Text
A few other notes:
p. 12 - "Tomas smiles. Satisfied."
p. 13 - "Tomas looks at his father."
p.14 -  "Rafael looks down."  "The priest sighs".  "A light rain begins"  " They leave"
p.18 - "Rafael reaches out..."
(The above are all places where you accidentally put description in your dialogue.  An easy fix.)


This occured when I transferred the script from Word to Final Draft. I've already fixed this. Thanks.


Quoted Text
Also, you introduce Juan early in the script but then keep referring to him as "The Man".  Why?  and then you re-introduce him on page 7.


I didn't realize this. I need to fix this.


Quoted Text
when you say the window's been nailed shut, you don't need to say the whole "protective measure bit, because we understand that already
.  

Again, I'll disagree with you. IMO it is okay to clarify certain descriptive instances like this. I know I tend to do it WAY too much but I still believe it is okay in this instance.


Quoted Text
Why didn't Andres just kill Nena?  I don't get why one minute he had to get her to the church, but the next minute he's willing to let her be killed by the lost souls.


The point was that Andres had to take her back to the Arc where it all began. I need to set this up better.


Quoted Text
I feel like Andres represents a lot of what's wrong with the script; in that we don't have backstories on anyone, and EVERYTHING is shrouded in mystery.  It kind of drags the story down a bit.


I think you are right here. Backstory on the characters may help clear things up. While I wanted the "reason" for the characters being there shrouded in mystery and revealed little by little, I wanted the characters conflicts with themselves and each other to be evident. I'm going to work on this to make it clearer.



Quoted Text
Joseph, you made me feel bad, so I decided to read your script, start to finish and give some feedback.


Thanks alot Dreamscale.


Quoted Text
I don’t want to offend you, put you down, or p*ss you off.


So you know, I've had MANY reviews of my work on this site (coming here in and out since 2003-2004) and I have NEVER gotten angry at a review that I'd been given or responded in a negative way to a reviewer. Never. And, to be honest, none of my scripts have received stellar, positive reviews. I'm used to my scripts getting beat down. I encourage harsh, critical, honest reviews. This is why I come to this site, to read scripts, review them every once in a while and post my own. What I don't like is pretentious attitudes from writers who have absolutely no reason to be pretentious. I don't come here to get into pissing contests. So please, don't patronize me with this. Please?


Quoted Text
never came across so little dialogue. This is another reason for the slowness of the read, as dialogue is usually quick to read, and broken up, making it easy to follow.e is quite strange, IMO.


I agree there is little dialogue. But I'm not a fan of long, speeches given by characters in an attempt to make the writer appear witty or intelligent. Nor am I a fan of bland, do-nothing dialogue. Both are wasted space, IMO. A differing of styles, I suppose.


Quoted Text
I’ve never come across a script like this with so many weird fragments that just don’t mean anything and seem so out of place.


Not sure how to respond to this.



Quoted Text
The passive writing was extreme as well.


I truly attempted not to do this. Of course there are instances where it is okay. I'll have to go back through and trim down those instances.


Quoted Text
I was quite lost with locales and distances between them.


This is one of the biggest problems I had writing (among others). The distances and time it would take to get to and from certain locations. I definitely need to go back and re work this to make it clearer.


Quoted Text
In the 2nd half of the script, you began using flashbacks, but you didn’t label them as such


Again, a differing of styles. I don't use FLASHBACK as a slug line. I think it is cheating. How many times have you seen a flashback on screen introduced with a header telling you it was a flashback? If a reader gets lost with a flashback then the writer needs to be clearer in its presentation without using FLASHBACK as a slugline.


Quoted Text
Joseph, I’m not sure what level this script is at, as in early first draft, or finished product.
  

Second draft.


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I know it’s never a pleasant thing to get a less than stellar review, but everything I’ve said here is meant to help.
  

Gracias, Dreamscale. The read and review is appreciated.

Joseph


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steven8
Posted: May 5th, 2009, 8:46pm Report to Moderator
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Quoted Text

Again, a differing of styles. I don't use FLASHBACK as a slug line. I think it is cheating. How many times have you seen a flashback on screen introduced with a header telling you it was a flashback? If a reader gets lost with a flashback then the writer needs to be clearer in its presentation without using FLASHBACK as a slugline.


I don't think it's cheating.  It's not for the audience, it's letting the director know what's happening.


...in no particular order
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medstudent
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Steven8,
You know you're probably right. Unfortunately, I've heard both ways. For me I'd rather not use them and let the reader read it as it would be shown. A good example of not using this is "Syndoche, NY". Kaufman goes in and out of different spaces and times without preparing the reader. It does help that he IS Charlie Kaufman, but reading it, and several others similar, I decided that not using it is best, for me anyways.

Joseph


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Brian M
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Hey Joseph,

My second draft is still about a week away but I thought I'd read this and leave you my thoughts today.

I have read through all of the comments and I really do hate to sing the same song as the others but it was a very slow read. First though, I want to concentrate on the story then get to the writing later as you already have lots of advice on that.

First some of the good points. I liked the uneasy releationship between Rafael and Tomas. The kind of Father - Son but at a distance kind of thing. I liked how Tomas expected something more instead of a handshake when Rafael was preparing to leave. You handled this well with what little dialogue they had but it could still be expanded on more. I did notice it was around page 69 before Tomas called Rafael "Father" for the first time, every other time he was called "Rafa".

Despite the over-descriptive opening, you handled it well. A very obese man running as fast as you described would look very VERY creepy on screen. It's a shame it takes so long for something else to happen after this. The others have mentioned the scene with the dead birds. Very visual and creepy. This was probably the standout scene.

The ending was well done. Although it is a bit easy having Eden just find this tunnel, I don't know. It still works, I just questioned how easy it was after all those years of fighting these lost souls, that's all. I was expecting things to be a lot worse outside the walls so you did get me with the ending. Well done.

Now, I do think you really need to add more here. I think it was Jeff who said if you take out many of the unneeded descriptions, you could chop this down to 60 odd pages. I don't even think Chuy's murder was shown on screen, we just seen him get pulled down. Tomas finds the bodies in Eden's house, why not show us Andres killing these innocent people. Give us some action and show how bad Andres is at the same time. As a horror, it needs more scares.

My next concern was the Lost Souls, or the Walking Dead, or whatever they were. You made it clear they were not human, they could run faster than any human could, they even acted like zombies when chasing Andres away from Nema. I don't think it was clear enough what these things actually where. When Rafael was turned to one of them, he never acted like a zombie or anything. Maybe it was just me, but I found their actions a little inconsistent.

I found the margins between the scene headings and the action lines to be a little strange. Final Draft (you said you used this) usually gives a bigger space for scene headings and that never happened here. Sometimes, I found myself missing a scene heading while reading and getting lost and confused. I don't know if this is the fault of the program or if you have input the scene headings in an action line in the program. The title page can be easily fixed. When I first got Final Draft, it took me a while to figure it out as it never saved when I filled it out. Go to DOCUMENT - TITLE PAGE, fill in your title page, go to the drop down menus, Don't save it from there though, go to FILE - CLOSE, it will take you back to your script, save it from there, the title page will save with it.

I also agree with the others that there has got to be more character development. Andres comes out of nowhere and I don't think that works at all. I think they all need their own little character arcs and each have more dialogue than they currently have. Maybe you where trying to let the visuals do the talking and let dialogue take a back seat, if that is the case, then you need more cool visuals like the dead birds scene. There's got to be more talking, to tell us more about the characters and to make the script easier to read.

The writing was a bit of a problem. Some descriptions felt strange, like this one, "Tomas makes a face at seeing his friend killed." Loads of cases of over describing, the hole in the church roof is mentioned a lot, as is the heavy rain, the reader won't forget about the hole in the roof, mention it at the start, then mention it again when it comes into play later on, the rest just waste space.

Some lines could be cut, like...p56 "Tomas enters through a busted in back door. Someone or something already been here, too." The door's busted, we know something's been there, that last but could be cut.  "Rafael leaves without waiting for a response from his son.", show us he's Rafael's son through the dialogue, don't tell us in the action. Show, Don't tell.

I also noticed that during which little dialogue there was, the characters addressed whoever they were talking to by their name nearly every time at the end of their sentence. The reader/viewer won't forget their name, people in real life don't do this so best keep it realistic.

There are a lot of instances of this throughout. I know you know about some action lines mixed in with dialogue. Some have been pointed out. I too, tried to keep track of them but gave up. It happens A LOT throughout, but easily fixed. Also, the character intros confused me, DON RAFAEL, RAFAEL, RAFA, pick one name and stick with it.

Overall, I'd be interested to give this another read when you do a new draft to see what you do with it. Others have said, a story is there, it just needs to be beefed up a bit, cut the descriptions, add more dialogue, a few more cool scenes and this could be really good.  

Brian

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Brian M  -  May 10th, 2009, 3:26pm
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I liked the uneasy releationship between Rafael and Tomas. The kind of Father - Son but at a distance kind of thing. I liked how Tomas expected something more instead of a handshake when Rafael was preparing to leave. You handled this well with what little dialogue they had but it could still be expanded on more. I did notice it was around page 69 before Tomas called Rafael "Father" for the first time, every other time he was called "Rafa".


Thanks. Really this is what this story is about, its theme: The faith we put into people and ideas and the certainty of our actions that go with this faith. What would you do if one day this certainty was shaken by opposing "evidence"?


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Despite the over-descriptive opening, you handled it well. A very obese man running as fast as you described would look very VERY creepy on screen. It's a shame it takes so long for something else to happen after this.


Well, it is definitely something that I am going to take a look at trimming down. I think one of the major problems with this is that it does take too long for another "event" or something to happen.


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I was expecting things to be a lot worse outside the walls so you did get me with the ending. Well done.


Thanks. While the ending was the starting point for the story, I didn't want it to be the only thing that made the story any good. I need the story to stand on its own without the ending.


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As a horror, it needs more scares.


I agree. Maybe not "scares in the typical sense but definitely it needs more suspense.


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My next concern was the Lost Souls, or the Walking Dead, or whatever they were. You made it clear they were not human, they could run faster than any human could, they even acted like zombies when chasing Andres away from Nema. I don't think it was clear enough what these things actually where. When Rafael was turned to one of them, he never acted like a zombie or anything. Maybe it was just me, but I found their actions a little inconsistent.


This was another big problem with this story. I couldn't get the image and visuals for these things down.  Probably one of the most troubling parts for me. Still not sure, to be honest. The next draft I am going to have to set the rules down for these guys. I didn't want them to be zombies, in the strictest sense. My intent was to make them "lost Souls" meaning they were neither living nor dead. They had no purpose. Everyone that dies on the affected side becomes one of these as punishment for Nena's resurrection. The only way to "cure" them is to cut their heads off before or after death. These creatures represent souls without a home. They are neither here nor there, without a purpose or place. This may sound funny but I pictured them as amoralistic, homless people.


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The title page can be easily fixed. When I first got Final Draft, it took me a while to figure it out as it never saved when I filled it out. Go to DOCUMENT - TITLE PAGE, fill in your title page, go to the drop down menus, Don't save it from there though, go to FILE - CLOSE, it will take you back to your script, save it from there, the title page will save with it.


Jeeze, I've been trying to get that damn thing to appear since I've had this program. Thanks.

I
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also agree with the others that there has got to be more character development.


Again, you are right. We don't get to know enough about these characters. I know who they are, or who they are supposed to be but I failed to put those ideas into the script.


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There's got to be more talking, to tell us more about the characters and to make the script easier to read.


I am stubborn but not stubborn enough to ignore the fact that this has been a real sticking point for everyone that�s read this. I think, like you and others have mentioned, that I should use more dialogue to tell about the characters.


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I also noticed that during which little dialogue there was, the characters addressed whoever they were talking to by their name nearly every time at the end of their sentence.


Didn't notice this. Thanks.


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Others have said, a story is there, it just needs to be beefed up a bit, cut the descriptions, add more dialogue, a few more cool scenes and this could be really good.  


Thanks, I too think there is something buried beneath all the excessiveness. I just need to pull it out and get rid of all the extraneous stuff. Thanks, again, for the read and review. It was very helpful.

Let me know when your second draft is up and I'll get on it.

Thanks to everyone (even Dreamscale  ) for your advice. I have plenty to take into the next draft. These reviews have been very enlightening.

Joseph


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