Ghost Written by Matt Pniewski - Short, Comedy - Two Ghosts are forced to become Guardian Angels to the spoiled teenager who lives in their home.  11 pages - pdf, format

This wasn’t too bad at all. The story seems to flow well and the two primary players were believable as a couple. It felt a little like Beetle Juice IMO.

You do need to intro the other characters though. They simply appear without introduction. A minor thing.

Also, there is a lot of “is talking” kind of action. This can be easily fixed by going back and tightening your action blocks. An example…

Mary is sobbing, putting pen to a piece of paper. Conner
Phases through the door.


Could read like…

Mary sobs, puts a pen to paper, Conner phases through the door.

Quick and clean-

All in all though, great little story here.

Nice job!

Shawn……><

I enjoyed this funny script, I agree with Ledbetter it could use a little cleaning up, and same in the dialog, just some minor fixing.  Like this line for example.
CONNER
What else is have I got? Don’t eat,
don’t sleep, all we do is hang
around the house. We could move on,
there is a world of potential in
this afterlife thing-

Drop the "is" in the line and it makes more sense.
What else have I got?

So just a read through and fix the minor mistakes and it's good.

Good story with a few typos.  Just needs a rewrite to clean up the little mistakes.

Quoted Text You do need to intro the other characters though. They simply appear without introduction. A minor thing.

You know, I originally envisioned a longer Intro, with Conner doing his thing while we introduce the Mary and Tyler's break up outside a school yard. This idea was scrapped because this was to be a student project, and I had a page limit. It might be a good idea to put it back in.

Especially since I'm no longer working under time limits, and have a larger budget to work from.

That's good.

There is a story and it clips right along dialogue and action wise and injects humor in an otherwise very serious issue. I like that Mary stays alive.

Quoted from cloroxmartini That's good. There is a story and it clips right along dialogue and action wise and injects humor in an otherwise very serious issue. I like that Mary stays alive.

Well, Mary needs to stay alive. Otherwise Conner and Amy did nothing worth note, and then their would be no point to the story other than a couple suicide jokes.

I mean, this is a response to movies like "Ratcatcher" or"The Craving Heart" and other films that try to hard to be depressing, usually involving suicide not as the subject matter but as an easy way for drama.  Which I kinda think ends up trivializing it.

This was a cute story, although I think it would've worked better if it was a dramatic piece, rather than a comedy.  While it did flow smoothly, it also dragged on a bit.  You probably could cut a page and a half off of it.

I liked how you took your time in explaining everything.  Explaining what happened to the ghosts right out of the gate would've been bad.  The same with why Mary wants to kill herself.  It just works better this way.

Hope this helps.


Phil

Matt,

This is a good story.
You took the tougher road and went for comedy with drama overtones.
Dialogue centric comedy is tougher than physical stuff, but you pull it off.
I liked it enough, I wanted more of a connection between the trio.
For a while, I thought we were going the nicer route a la Beetlejuice.
I thought the ghosts were going to directly help Mary by befriending her.
And I don't mean directly either, something like...
Mary "discovers" an old diary from the previous owners or something.
Connor and Amy communicate with Mary through the journal, etc.
As it stands, I like the story and most of the execution, well done.

Here are a few scene specific notes...

The spacing of your slugs around the hyphens is off, not sure why.
Once Connor is named, you still call him "figure", it was distracting.
No intro for Mary, I had to figure her age out as we went along.
I went back through the script to see if I missed her intro, very distracting.
I LoL'd at the $50 chandelier line, good one.
I was unclear about Mary's ending, is she moving out? Or to a new room?
I know she has parents and she's in school, but I don't get why she's packing.

Thanks for the post and keep writing.
I look forward to your next submission.

Regards,
E.D.

Quoted from Electric Dreamer Matt, This is a good story. You took the tougher road and went for comedy with drama overtones. Dialogue centric comedy is tougher than physical stuff, but you pull it off. I liked it enough, I wanted more of a connection between the trio. For a while, I thought we were going the nicer route a la Beetlejuice. I thought the ghosts were going to directly help Mary by befriending her. And I don't mean directly either, something like... Mary "discovers" an old diary from the previous owners or something. Connor and Amy communicate with Mary through the journal, etc. As it stands, I like the story and most of the execution, well done.

You know, that's not a bad idea, I think I might end up using it. An issue I have is that, at the conclusion, the relationship doesn't come full circle. The idea is that they don't like her, but begin to have a sort of friendship by the end. Unfortunately, I don't think that comes across. But this helps. Quite a bit.

Quoted Text The spacing of your slugs around the hyphens is off, not sure why.

I opened up the PDF file on my computer, and saw the problem.

I opened it up on Celtx, and check it there, everything seemed fine. I'll work on it.

Quoted Text No intro for Mary, I had to figure her age out as we went along. I went back through the script to see if I missed her intro, very distracting.

I cut her original intro Scene (and Tyler's), and I forgot to actually put that info in the script at another point. That's been since fixed.

Quoted Text I was unclear about Mary's ending, is she moving out? Or to a new room? I know she has parents and she's in school, but I don't get why she's packing.

An oversight on my part working on this draft, that I'm fixing right now actually- I forgot to rewrite the bedroom scenes to include the pictures of Tyler that were important in my first draft (this is draft 2.5).  I tend to, when I read this, remember what was in earlier drafts regardless if I am seeing the words. I only notice things missing when other people read it outloud.

She's not packing, she tossing away all her old pictures of her and Tyler.

Quoted Text I LoL'd at the $50 chandelier line, good one.

Agreed. I like it even more seeing that it's a work around- Our location won't let us do our original scene, so we had to limit the sequence, and the line was thrown in to be purely expository. But I think it ended up working, and coming off naturally, and also give more info about Connor's background.