False Pretenses by Steve Meredith - Short, Drama - A decade after David Chambers was acquitted of murdering his entire family, newspaper reporter Cooper Reed pays a visit to a man whom he previously thought was dead.  That man is Sam Geary, who wrote several articles about the Chambers crime, and came dangerously close to uncovering the truth.  Soon after meeting Sam, Cooper is caught in a game of cat and mouse, where the lines between truth, fiction, friend, and enemy, are all blurred. 15 pages - pdf, format

Hi Steve,

Interesting set-up but in the end it's basically a very, very wordy summation of events that I would've preferred to see happen rather than hear two guys talk about. If it was much shorter it might work, and to be honest, these fifteen pages could easily be condensed to eight or ten. Spoilers ahead:

Quoted Text A man of about 28 years of age exits the car, and grabs a messenger bag from the front passenger seat. The man's name is COOPER REED, a reporter for the Hamilton Gazette.

This is how you would introduce a character in a story or novel, but not in a script. Generally, character introduction are done thusly: COOPER REED (age), short description of appearance.
The part highlighted in bold is an unfilmable. You can only describe things the audience can see or hear.

Quoted Text Reed knocks on the door. A voice from inside answers.                      VOICE: (O.S.) Who is it?

Leave the bold part out. When somebody knocks on a door and then an off-screen voice answers, it's pretty clear where it comes from. And colons are never used before dialogue, I'd take them all out.

Quoted Text   REED: (taken aback, apologetically) Sir, I know it's late and I'm really sorry for intruding, but I'm researching an article, and I need your help.

DO you see what's going on there? In scriptwriting less is almost always more, definitely so when you're repeating yourself. I'd cut the entire wrylie.

Quoted Text REED: Mr. Durant, this will only take a couple of seconds. I'm doing some background research on a murder that occurred in the town of Riverview about a decade ago.

Who's he kidding? This will take minutes, at least.

Quoted Text DURANT: Well I don't buy that for a second. Not at all. Why the hell would you come to my boat, my home, and not only ask to speak to me, but bring a bottle of scotch so expensive, that you probably had to write ten stories just to be able to afford it?

Quoted Text GEARY: So let me get this straight. You enter my boat under false pretenses, claiming to write for a podunk little paper that, as far as I can tell, doesn't even exist. You start asking questions about the story that not only got me disgraced, but cost me my job, and you not only expect me to talk to you about that piece, but you expect me to be happy about it. Do I have that correct?

This happens a few times, characters repeating the same words or sometimes even phrases. Also, the first time you change Durant into Geary you might to write it as DURANT/GEARY and then later just GEARY, this helps avoid confusion.

Quoted Text REED: (CONT'D) I gotta hand it to you. Finding a man like you, a guy who faked his own death, that's incredibly hard. A beat. REED: (CONT'D) My real name is Cooper Reed, but I write for the Riverview Courier. The same paper for which you wrote six pieces about the Chambers murders, and it would have been seven articles, had you not fallen off the face of the Earth. I gotta hand it to you, you're a hard man to find, Geary.

You would've caught these if you went through your script one last time before sending it in.

Quoted Text Durant's eyes widen for a moment, as he realizes that Reed knows his real identity: SAM GEARY, a former reporter for the Riverview Courier.

All of that is an unfilmable. We don't know what your characters are thinking. You can leave that whole part out, it's already clear from the dialogue why he's surprised.

Quoted Text GEARY: Cooper, I like my life out here. It's simple. I've got internet and direct TV, and most nights, I'm able to catch my dinner, so trips to the store are sparse for me. I'm going to reiterate my question, and if you don't answer me this time, I'm going to count to three. Give me one reason, why I should kill you right now?

Shouldn't.

Quoted Text GEARY: (shaking his head "no") Notes only. Nothing that can be bugged. I'd prefer if you chuck your phone into the river. Reed looks skeptical. GEARY: (CONT'D) Work will pay for a new one. Reed chucks his phone out the window,

Why the hell would his employer pay for a new phone? This was such a ridiculous moment; why is Geary throwing over a thousand dollars worth of equipment into the river when he can just step outside to talk?

Quoted Text GEARY: Your telling me.

You're.

Quoted Text A beat. Geary takes a drag on his cigarette.

You make heavy use of "a beat" throughout. In this case you can cut it because a character taking a drag off a cigarette is in effect a beat.

There was more but I think these are some of the biggest offenders. Alongside with the dialogue, because most of it was extremely on the nose. It was almost like reading a court transcript of some old case. It got very bad toward the end, incredibly long speeches by both characters with nothing but exposition and preaching.

Then there's the very end: Geary killing Reed. It negates your entire script. Why the hell would he waste his time telling him everything (which you later reveal, he has apparently done numerous times with other reporters) instead of shooting him from the start. Or... why not just close the door on his face? Geary is under the watchful eye of the FBI and you expect us to believe that he's some kind of secret (or inadvertent) serial killer, killing hordes or reporters under their noses? Does he also throw out all his electronics every single time this happens? Who pays for it?

Again, the set-up is interesting but it goes awry pretty early on, not sure if you could save this or if it's just me.


Sandro

'There is a thin layer of fog on the surface of the river, making the bridge running over the river'... You could have worded that better. You say 'the river' twice.

'A single pair of headlights cut through the darkness as the
approaching car turns left when it reaches the end of the
bridge'. That's a very long sentence, without commas.

It's a shame you started off the story, like that.

'Cooper, with all due respect, get
the fuck off of my boat'.  Maybe a bit of a cheesy thing to say, lol, but maybe not.

'Do I have that correct?
Reed nods.' That was funny, lol.

The conversation between Reed and Geary goes on for a very long time, and I got bored of it, eventually. I wanted at least something else to happen.


'I lost everything.  My life has
been reduced to this fucking boat!' Before, he said he liked the boat. I understand that the first time, he may not have meant it, but it may seem strange to readers. Or maybe it won't, I don't know..

On the whole I thought it was reasonably entertaining. There's some intelligence in the writing, I think. The story was reasonably complicated.

Steve,

Some comments as I read.

The reporter showing up at night doesn't ring true.  Who in his right mind would head out in the dark.  Now, if he had called ahead of time and gotten lost, well, I'll buy the late hour.  Otherwise, it's made up for your story.

This guy is a reporter and he's vague about the murder details?  Shouldn't he nail all the pertinent info?  Date, time, victims, etc?

We change names which is fine.  I'm not sure why Geary has to restate the obvious.  

In the less is more vein...'Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you and dump your body in the river.'  is more than enough.  All the extra stuff about the location has already been established.

We have a lot of talk and some drama (toss out the laptop and tv?) but it's going too slow.

'your' is not 'you're'

A convoluted story told by dialogue that doesn't ring true.  If Geary is going to kill Reed, why bother with the chat and the dumped laptop and all of it?  Doesn't make sense.  In fact, the story doesn't ring true.  But that's me.  

The writing has mistakes, and that's not good but the mistakes are fixable.  The story itself needs work.  The basics are OK.  A reporter hunts down someone who can shed some light on an old murder.  After that, it runs off the rails a bit.

Best
Richard