Alex
The first page is daunting, man. You need to tighten up this writing a lot.
Cut down the blocks of prose to no more than 4 lines.
Only include the necessary visual information. Short, punchy sentences speed up the read no end.
Take the first block of prose for example:
EXT. LAKE DAY
“Two men, YOUNG and WISE, are on a fishing trip, sitting on a
small rowboat situated in the middle of a lake. Young is a
wiry young chap in his mid 20s and wears a shirt and tie
beneath a restrictive life jacket. Wise is a heavy-set man
in his 50s, who is dressed more casually than his companion
and has declined the addition of a life jacket. Upon his
head sits a captain’s hat, shielding his face from the
assault of the summer sun.”
- This could be rewritten like this:
EXT. LAKE - DAY
“Two MEN sit in a small rowboat, fishing.
YOUNG (mid 20s) wiry physique, wears a shirt and tie under a tight life jacket.
Beside him, WISE (mid 20s) heavy set, casually dressed, no life jacket. He sports a captain’s hat.”
- That’s all you need. The key information is retained in half the words.
The rest of the script displays similar examples of over writing; you need to work on that.
Also I can predict already that Wise’s lack of life jacket it going to play a part here.
The whistling repartee is a nice touch. Its effectiveness though would depend solely on the actors, could come off sounding hammy if executed incorrectly.
“Wise scolds him”
-Where is the dialogue here? Is it a telepathic scold or what?
I like the strange off kilter tone here though, the mysterious transportation of the boat to the ocean, the approaching storm all of which both men seem to be oblivious to. It gives the piece a sense of surrealism and creeping dread, hard to fathom whether events are real or not.
“For a few moments, the scene resembles one of those cartoon fights that become a dustball with limbs flying out of it.”
- I know exactly what you mean here but I don’t know how you would achieve it in a life action piece, especially in waist high water! Or do you mean “water” instead of “dustball”?
“decidely limp”
- This phrase amused me…even of “decidedly” is spelt wrong.
“Young sits down dutifully on the sand next to the older man.”
- Presuming “The Older Man” is Wise, how could this be since at the beginning you said they were both in their mid 20s?
“Young trots toward the trees with a machete in hand. He sets
about hacking away at the smaller ones, chips of wood flying
all over the place. After a bit of hard work and a few
splinters he has a sizeable collection of large wooden
sticks. He cuts off some vines for rope and begins to pack
the lumber into bundles.”
He drags the bundles back toward the hut and dumps them on
the beach. Wise does not look toward him, but continues to
watch his line intently.
Young begins to use the vines and the lumber to build a
small raft. When he is done, he looks at it proudly and
dusts off his hands."
- This would work much better as a montage I reckon.
Mmm, got the end at couldn’t really make much sense of it unfortunately. I thought the life jacket would play a part but alas it was a red herring, that’s fair enough. However, I didn’t get the whole slave and master hierarchy of Young and Wise when they were stranded on the desert island.
Then the leave the island, fish on a luxurious yacht before being back on the boat and the captain’s hat is passed. What are we supposed to take away from this? What are you trying to say here?
Given the odd tone of the piece it could well have been a fanciful dream or a story told by Wise. It seems that Young earned his stripes if you will by his hard graft on the island but why? Why was Yound so willingly the slave to Wise anyway? Where did the hula girl come from?
As you can tell I have a lot of questions, not a bad thing I suppose if you can convince me that something deeper is at work here on some level but for a 4 pager it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. And since it is so brief this shouldn’t be the case. I can’t see how I could’ve missed much.
Either way, I would love to hear your explanations.
Oh and just to reiterate as a word of friendly advice; sort out the action lines, read other scripts, see how it’s done. This kind of laborious writing is turn off number one for most people.
Best of luck
Col.