The Guiding Man by Luke Mepham - Thriller, Mystery - When a man is diagnosed with a condition which causes him to keep returning from the dead, it strains the relationship with his wife. But something more sinister is brewing. 90 pages - pdf, format

Hey Luke,

I read this because the logline really intrigued me.
I'll write the feedback as I go and i don't know if i'll read the lot right now because to be honest I'm pretty hungover and I gotta go to work.
Anyway....

First page - The dialogue with the two boys seems a little forced.

2nd page - Although you already introduced them as TWO YOUNG BOYS, I think you should individually introduce them as DAVID and MICHAEL

"Michael, now 30, is driving his car back from work. He works
as a taxi driver and can’t wait to get out and stretch his
legs. The street lights pave the way for him. It’s been a
long day and he can’t wait to see his wife. He’s clearly
tired and isn’t listening to the radio."
Can't wait to get out and stetch his legs.. shouldn't be there. Also.. It’s been a
long day and he can’t wait to see his wife.. These actions aren't filmable.

Get rid of the continued's at the top and bottom of the page.

Page 6 - "He gets up and walks to where the clock was and digs the
heel of his shoe into the ground."
This is in the garden? But it's still down as the dining room in the slug. Confused a little. but if it is in the garden then you need a new slug to let us know.

Page 7 - Again, Jessica and Raymond's dialogue seems odd to me. Doesn't feel natural.

Page 9 - "They say goodbye and hang up." Have that as dialogue.

OK, I'm 10 pages in and I gotta stop (my head is banging, from the hangover, not your story).
Hope what I've said has helped a little.

Although nothing huge has happened yet, I'm still intrigued and will try read on later.
The scenes in the other realm are weird and Michael continuously dying is interesting so I'd like to see where it goes.

Good luck with this.

Glenn

Hello Luke,

So I read your entire screenplay and I can tell you worked hard on it. What I liked about it is that it reads very quickly and has some interesting moments, enough to get me through to the end.

The biggest problem is the script lacks credibility. There are quite a few scenes that just don't make sense. What I mean is your story asks the reader to suspend his disbelief to the extreme.

One example is Michael flips a car and there are no repercussions and his boss still has a job for him.  

It’s the same with the doctor’s scenes. Generally the doctors lack credibility due to how they handle Michael. The psychiatrist just sends Michael on his way after one session. He doesn’t function as a real doctor would.

Even though you are getting me to believe a character can die for twenty minutes and go to purgatory you can’t expect me to believe a reporter will just accept that Michael can die and go to purgatory without much resistance.

The biggest problem is Michael doesn’t have a clearly defined visible goal through the majority of the story. This needs to be established within the first 25% of the screenplay then the rest is about him trying to achieve this goal.

I would like to see the characters become developed more. Each scene of dialogue is a general back and forth. Dialogue should have conflict in it and also be used to define the character’s profiles.

Lastly, for a spec script (I’m assuming this is a spec script) you do not need to used cut to’s or any camera directions. Those are for shooting scripts only.

I hope this helps you out and keep up the good work. You have a cool story here and with some revision: more focus on character development, and a clearly defined goal for Michael you can take it to a new level.