Sport Lad by Alan Power - Short - A sporty person attempts to the win the heart of a girl by competing in all the games at the local sports day but suffers from pulled muscles, getting shot at and other sport related sufferings. 5 pages - pdf, format

Hey Alan-
     I guess this could be a funny story but there's a lot of work that needs to be done.  The formatting is off.  The first scene doesn't need separate lines for everything and there's a lot of it that doesn't seem necessary.  If he is being presented as a good guy to his girlfriend you wouldn't know it from the rest of the story. Actually,  he comes across as a dick. If that's the case I don't care that he's getting hurt and fighting through his pain.  As a matter of fact I hope he gets hurt again in his next event.  Another thing,  the character and dialogue aren't formatted correctly either.  I'm not even really sure what the story is about. Tough read.  Keep at it though.  
Vinni

Alan

Comments can give a sporting chance.

This one could certainly work  if it was trimmed a bit and not so blatant and nonsensical.  You have a boy who wants to impress a girl on sports day, and that's great.  You do it all without dialogue which is also good.  It might work better if you cut down the number of events and number of trips to the trainer.  And since when do trainers use vodka to cleanse a wound?  Alcohol would be painful enough without wasting good booze.  

that everything works against the lad is fine with me.  He fails, and he loses the girl, but he plucky so he finds a new photo to adore.  Great.  You might consider having him win despite all the failure.  It's through the failure that he gets the girl he wants.  It doesn't depend on winning, it depends on striving.  But that's another story perhaps.  In any case, reformat this one and get a little more real--i don't consider the javelin scene to be real, people don't attack with javelins during a sports day, do they?  

best
Richard

Hey Alan,

This read like a silent movie script. Thinking about it this would probably work really well as a black and white silent movie, so maybe you should have a go and try to get it produced as such? The ending didn’t work for me.  I have no idea who Mary Byrne is, if this was a silent movie our Lad would somehow win over the girl, usually by total accident. Food for thought!

-Mark

Quoted from Vinni Hey Alan-      I guess this could be a funny story but there's a lot of work that needs to be done.  The formatting is off.  The first scene doesn't need separate lines for everything and there's a lot of it that doesn't seem necessary.  If he is being presented as a good guy to his girlfriend you wouldn't know it from the rest of the story. Actually,  he comes across as a dick. If that's the case I don't care that he's getting hurt and fighting through his pain.  As a matter of fact I hope he gets hurt again in his next event.  Another thing,  the character and dialogue aren't formatted correctly either.  I'm not even really sure what the story is about. Tough read.  Keep at it though.   Vinni

The formatting is correct and there's no dialog in the script.

Quoted from Equinox The formatting is correct and there's no dialog in the script.

Well, there are at least couple of minor hiccups, IMO.

Quoted Text EXT. SPORTS DAY / RACE - DAY

Sports Day is not a location. It is an event. Needs to be changed to something like SPORTS FIELD or ARENA or something like that especially since the rest of the way the author is using mini-slugs the rest of the way.

Quoted Text FIRST AID STATION FIRST AID slaps a cotton bandage onto Lad’s collar bone area. Lad winces in ultimate pain.

Having a character name the same is the scene heading is a bit odd. Took me a couple of reads to get it. Think it works better with ATTENDANT or something like that.

I agree, eldave - I didn't say it was perfect, but it's written in correct screenplay format. Having single-line action blocks is nothing wrong like Vinni said. And the dialog can't be formatted wrong if there is no dialog in the whole script.

Quoted from Equinox I agree, eldave - I didn't say it was perfect, but it's written in correct screenplay format. Having single-line action blocks is nothing wrong like Vinni said. And the dialog can't be formatted wrong if there is no dialog in the whole script.

The single lines didn't bother me either - in this case - I k ind of liked them.