A Brothers Love by Duane Pressley (gyu75) - Drama, Suspense - When their father dies unexpectingly Two identical twin brothers who have dreams of making it to the NBA and raised in the suburbs are forced into the inner city along with there mom, must get themselves out by any means necesssary.  163 pages - doc, format

irishkenya,

"Kill Bill" didn't need to be in proper format because Tarantino is one of the most sought-after filmmakers working today.

I scanned through this the other day and I was not going to say anything - however, since you've now given the writer false hope, I feel I have to do so.

The formatting is a complete mess, made all the worse by the fact that it's in Word format and not PDF.

The opening slug, FADE IN ON - DAY does not tell us where we are. We learn it from the narrative ( a no-no). The narratives are overwritten and clunky and the dialogue is way too on the nose. Add to that spelling errors in the dialogue like "breath" for "breathe".

And it seemed to me like the father dying was out of the blue. Sure, people die suddenly in real life, but this is not real life, it's a drama. Show us that he's having chest pains, or give us something that lets us know he has a medical condition (i.e., taking pills). Otherwise it's too convenient.

This is in the first few pages. There is not a producer alive who would read past the first page. I'm sorry to be harsh, but to address the writer for a moment, there are free screenwriting packages out there - I use CELTX for my short scripts and it works fine. There may be a story here and it may be a good one, but very few people will invest beyond the opening in its current form.

Best of luck with this - Anthony

Completely overwritten. So much could be condensed from your opening pages, that I could imagine this being 120 pages if written prooperly.

Your opening line.
"A backyard basketball court, suburbs of VA, behind a nice middle class type house two young boys are playing each other in basketball."

better...
"Two young boys play basketball behind a middle class type house." - we get that theres a court if they're playing. we can't know that it's the suburbs of VA. You have to show us that later somehow.

Aj's right that few will sit through a 163 pages and give you good advice.

Also, Irishkenya?? Alway suspect when a script like this pops up and some unknown who joins uses his first post to pump the script.

Good luck getting reads, better try to offer some feature script exchanges. This definitely needs work IMO.

James

I am a reading teacher and I have been sifting through these screenplays for a while; I just never registered. I am not an expert on screenplay writing, but I am an avid reader and I am willing to put aside my need for grammatical accuracy to enjoy a good story. I have read plenty on here and this is by far one of the best reads as far as plot-line is concerned. By the end, I felt like I knew his characters and I liked the irony in the title.

At first, I was critical about the way the story was headed.  I thought it may be just another urban drug ballad, but as I continued to read I got caught up in the twists and turns that kept me guessing; it was impressive. I was drawn to his character Consuela and I would have bet my BA that I had the ending all figured out, but I would have lost it and been jobless, lol.

The ending is one of the best parts it was along the lines of "The Usual Suspects" -
I stand by my convictions that although there are some technical errors, it is worth reading.

I would rather sit through a very interesting movie that is a little longer than average than sit through a movie that is formatted correctly, but is completely predictable, unrealistic and total garbage!!

I understand that you guys are experts in this field, but occasionally one must close his eyes to error and focus on the story ( a trick I learned when reading my student's work). You may find out that you like it.

irishkenya,

First of all, no one here is an expert or ever claimed to be one - we are simply writers who have taken great pains to learn the craft and format of screenwriting. It is a craft because it's visual writing, and format exists so that professionals can compare apples to apples and know how long a film will run.

And if you say the writer has story going for him, then fine, we believe you. But that doesn't make a writer. If he's a good storyteller and nothing else, he needs to hire someone to make it presentable.

You say you're a teacher, so please, do me a favor and read his logline, and tell me if that's proper grammar and sentence structure?  I knew from there how the rest of the script would be written.

Yes, the logline is a mess.

Not sure what you (writer) were thinking there... it doesn't even pertain to the true plot of the script.

Still, the story is well written--- although you make a valid point. The writer should invest in a professional to tighten up the format (hint hint).