Out of Suspects by Jennifer Armstrong - Short - When artifacts begin mysteriously disappearing from his museum, Felix suspects that one of his shady employees is to blame. But when the missing items show up in his own home,he realizes something much more sinister is going on.   11 pages - pdf, format

Hi, Jennifer.

So there are some minor formatting issues like the space between Giani's name and his dialogue. For the most part, the formatting is good.

Onto the writing...

The descriptions are way too long. Always keep them to a maximum of 4 lines. A lot of the description seemed a bit redundant too e.g. 'Abigail, feeling uncomfortable with anyone in her
personal space begins to back away.' Just say she backs away. We'll get the message. There's also a lot of adjectives you could scrap. Needs tightening up.

Most of the dialogue seems to me, a bit tacky and on-the-nose. It doesn't feel natural. Like when Felix talks to himself at the start. We can see he's tired, we don't need him to tell us.

I stopped pretty early on because of the lack of flow this script had. I think it's pretty daunting looking at 2-3 action lines every 2 or 3 lines of dialogue. Read some other scripts, focus on the conciseness of them. Sorry to say, but this does need work. I can't comment on the story much cos the previously mentioned bothered me too much. Maybe try a rewrite?

I hope this helped.

Sorry, Jennifer, but your writing here is not good to say the least.

I have a feeling you're either very young or this may be your first stab at screenwriting, so I don't mean to be harsh.

Sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation are all poor.  Lots of unfilmables and extra stuff that's completely unnecessary that's bloating your script.

Levon brings up good points as well.

As it is, few will get through this, based on the writing/grammar alone.  Now, the good news, is that although the writing is poor, it's not terrible and many are in your boat.

Lots of easy fixes if you spend the time and take the effort.

best of luck.

Hey Jennifer!

I could echo the previous two posts but will add that you'll learn a lot by reading more scripts as well.

The good news is that you are over the hump on the hard part: the concept of a good story. The logline hooked me.

Hey Jennifer.

So out of the gate, your first sentence is awkwardly written.  "...uses his keys to unlock..."  It's safe to assume he uses a key which makes that piece redundant unless he uses something else.  We also can't really tell he's the curator.  Giving him descriptions and the keys would certainly be a way around that.

The out-loud thinking done by Felix reads kinda funny to me.  Don't know why but it just seems to be an unnatural reaction to a missing piece of art, almost comical.  I'd expect a "f***" or something of that nature if someone stole a priceless artifact from my collection.

Some telling instead of showing.  "Abigale, feeling uncomfortable with anyone in her personal space..."  What does this mean to you?  I imagine a holding of the breath, an inching away from the personal space violator or a nervous twitch.  Show Abigale in her uncomfortable state.  You touched on it with Abigale backing away but the piece before it is not necessary.

So I'll stop on page 2.  Hopefully you're around.  There really was no setup for this scene as it sits.  I get that we're in the Earthquake museum but for what I imagine is a grand setting, I felt is was neglected.  I think a little more description of the location would have aided in the flow of the story but that's just me.  Good luck.

Johnny