High Road by Gregory Torrillo (SweetEdge) - Short, Action - A drug dealer from the city stops at a small town on his route to make a few drops and gets caught up in the local boss' plan to take over the town. 23 pages - pdf, format

Okay, so I managed to finish reading the script and I am not too impress with it, sorry.

Story
The pace is very slow. There are many insignificant details before Murray starts hunting down people. I don't like the flashbacks. Remember this, bring in flashbacks only when we are eager to know more. Here you put in flashbacks for exposition. Many of the scenes lack real conflict and do not move the story forward. Even after the first 15 pages, meetings after meetings, (e.g. Weber, TJ, Dublin) all we know is that DY is a drug dealer and Murray is after him. Long story short, take out some of the meetings and move the real story (DY getting revenge on Murray) up sooner.

Characters
Way too many characters sharing the same function. Hoover and Tapeworm are the same person; Weber, TJ and Missy are also the same person. It's hard to understand so many characters in a short story. Also, please bring in Holiday way sooner. You introduced her on page 18 and I didn't really care much for her when she got kidnapped. I suggest developing the relationship between Holiday and DY.

Dialogue
This is the worst part of the script. You are writing a novel with so many lengthy voiceover. Some of them are not even important to the story. E.g. you gave us details of some minor characters. Remember, if you want us to know about characters, it is through their action when they are under pressure. Also, please dramatize what you are trying to say. E.g. "You can't trust these small town yahoos", you can show it by having DY counting the bills from Weber. Otherwise, the dialogue are okay. Just make sure do exposition via conflicts, not just one person (Dublin) spilling beans to another (DY).

Writing
The writing is fine. I have no problem here.


P.S. I think this is more drama than action. If you have DY escaping from Murray and then struggles through various physical obstacles to reach Murray, then you'll have an action piece.

So I won't repeat what Coding said which was right on by the way. I did get all the way through it to.

PASSIVE VERBAGE- GALORE. It is one of the things I myself am still working on.

In a script, most everyone- scratch that, EVERYONE has told me passive verbs have no place in a script.

IS RUNNING, WAS TAKING, IS TALKING, STOPPING ECT...

Those are to be shortened to lines like RUNS, TALKS, STOPS. Get it?

Ok, I will repeat one thing Coding said that also stuck out to me as well. It did seem like one meeting after another, page after page. It did kinda wear me down.

Your writing style is good though. I will give you that.

Shawn.....><