Schoolies Week by Warren Duncan - Horror - Four friends attending Schoolies Week, Australia's Spring Break, must fight for more than their right to party when a virus spreads through Surfers Paradise. 94 pages - pdf, format

Hi all,

Love to get a few reads and comments on this if possible. It's my first feature and it has been a long time in the making.

Happy to return the favour if anyone wants something specific read.

Thanks in advance.

Warren

Hey Warren.  I've seen you around here and you appear to be going about this the right way, by reading and commenting on other scripts, and even asking for reads here.

So, I thought I'd throw you a bone and see what we have here.

Not being from AussieLand, the title threw me.  So, I did some research into Schoolies Week.  In your logline, you refer to it as "Australia's Spring Break", but that's actually not true.  No big deal, though.

So, I read up to page 13 and threw in the towel.

You open on a very cliche scene and what follows continues to be very cliche.  I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure I've seen this exact same plot several times.  But hey, who cares, right?  It's hard to come up with a completely unique premise and what matters most is how you pull it off.

I'm sorry to say that you didn't pull it off here, though.  What I read is slow, generic, and predictable.  Your writing is also very "stale".  Nothing jumps off the page or seems to have any life.  Lots of passive lines.  Even the lines that aren't written passively, read like a grocery list, with no life.  And finally, the biggest stake through this zombie's face is the dialogue.  None of it sounds realistic. None of the characters sound believable.

On a positive note, compared to most scripts posted on SS, this is much cleaner in terms of writing mistakes, but there are still numerous issues throughout, mainly missing commas.  But, there is an issue that continues throughout that I want to bring up, as you may not be aware.

Your passages are not broken up correctly.  What you want to shoot for in a passage, is a single thought, action, description, or "shot".  Think about it this way, if you were filming this yourself with a single camera, every time you have to move the camera or stop filming, you want a new passage.  Check this out from your script, page 11...

"Gerald flips Janice on to her back and grabs her hair. He
bares all his teeth. A Car SCREECHES to a halt. Two POLICE
OFFICERS jump out and unholster their weapons."

You start this passage with Gerald attacking Janice, and baring his teeth.  Then, you've got "a Car" screeching to a halt somewhere, followed to by 2 cops getting out.

This is obviously not 1 thought, action, or shot.

On a different note, this whole attack is tough to swallow, so to speak.  Gerald has turned into a rabid beast, capable to ripping flesh from bone, yet feeble little Janice, who is 60 years old, is able to push him off her and take off running again.  Doesn't work for me.

On the same page, check out this dialogue from Janice, as Gerald is literally biting off flesh from her arms,

"Stop, Gerald.  Please stop."

It was at this point that I began wondering if this is supposed to be serious or some kind of pisser.  Know what I'm saying?  If that scene was filmed, it would come off like  comedy, based on that dialogue.

I hope this helps and makes sense.  If you need more examples of what I'm talking about, just let me know.

You're on the right track and you've found the best place to learn about writing.  Just make sure you do alot of reading and commenting and I'm sure you'll get lots of help.

Take care, bro.  

Thanks for the read. Much appreciated.

So you got me on the Spring Break/Schoolies Week thing. I do realise they are not exactly the same thing. It is an Australian tradition that many people, just like you, may not have been aware of. Because of this fact I decided that the similarities that they did share, which I think are a fair few, warranted me drawing the comparison.

I always felt this was cliché, but I ran with the idea anyway. As it was my first piece of writing I really tried to use it to work on the more technical side of writing and potentially the story suffered. I don't think that or I wouldn’t have submitted it, but if you only got to page 13 it’s not looking good.

Note sure where the missing commas are. Some examples, if you have the time, would be great. I feel I am a bit of a grammar nut when it comes to my writing so that one was surprising to me.

As far as the way the action has been broken up, I will definitely have a look at that. Not going to lie that one slipped through the cracks. Thanks for pointing it out.

Point taken with Janice and Gerald, that’s just stupid. Easy fix.

Definitely not meant to be a comedy, so I clearly missed the mark.

Guess it's back to the drawing board.

I still feel there is a story to be told here, and I hope someone can get to the 93 pg. mark.

Thanks again. All criticism is welcomed and taken onboard.

Warren, SS isn't like it used to be, in that it's rare that people read entire features these days - especially from a "new" writer that they don't know.  The other problem is that, as I said, this concept is not remotely fresh or new.

As for the grammar nut, I'm with ya there.  I'll show you a few examples and give you a few suggestions that may help.

Page 2 - "A KNOCK on the bedroom door and it immediately swings open.
Matt’s mother HEATHER, 45, stands in the doorway." -

First of all, you need a comma between "mother" and "Heather".  Secondly, the passage is awkwardly written.  Third, if Matt's mother isn't in the script again and no one addresses her as Heather, you probably don't even want to name her.

Page 3 - "Heather and Matt’s friends DOUG, 18, a tall muscular guy
covered in tatoos with a cigarette perched behind his ear and
TOM, 17, a well presented, clean cut young man wait for Angie
and Matt," -

First, you need commas between "friends" and "DOUG", "tall" and "muscular", and I'd put one between "man" and "wait".  Secondly, again, this entire passage is awkwardly written and phrased.  Fourth, "tatoos" and "clean cut" are misspelled.  But look at the passage a bit deeper - In most civilizations, we can assume that Doug and Tom are both males, so no need to use "man" or "young man" in the description.  Also, no reason whatsoever to use "Heather and Matt's friends" or "wait for Angie and Matt" - and why are they Heather's friends?  Typo, I assume.  Bottom line, you can easily trim this 4 line description passage into a much stronger 2 line passage.

Page 4 - "Matt punches Doug in the arm. Matt waves and everyone gets
in. Heather waves as the car pulls away." -

This is a pretty good example of what I was referring to as "stale writing" and poorly broken up passages.  Look at this passage and read it over several times.  First, the stale part - Matt does this.  Matt does that.  Heather does this.  See what I'm saying?  Dull and almost as if you're just writing a list of what's happening.  Now, the passage part - it starts out with the kids outside the car.  Next line, Matt waves and they all get in the car.  Finally, we go to a completely different shot, of Heather on the front porch, waving as the car is now pulling away.  It's not even remotely in real time, as written, and when that's the case, you have to use new passages.

Page 5 - "All taken care of my very sceptical friend." -

Whenever someone uses someone else's name (or anything that is being used as a name) in dialogue, you have to set it off with a comma(s).  So, you need a comma between "of" and "my".  This occurs many times in your script.  Also, obviously, "sceptical" is spelled wrong.

Sometimes it's little things that keep repeating themselves in scripts that stand out.  Don't repeat your Slugline in the passage that follows.  Don't add in or repeat unnecessary descriptors in lines.  You can pretty much throw out every single "and" and replace them with a comma, as it reads faster/better, and also saves a few spaces, sometimes saving an entire line and doing away with an orphan.

One more example to show what I mean about the "and thing" - Page 5 -

"Tom opens the glove compartment and takes out three drivers
licences. He hands one to Matt and one to Angie. He keeps one
for himself."

Rewritten as - "Tom opens the glove compartment, takes out three Driver's
licenses.  He hands one to Matt, one to Angie, and keeps one for himself."

You save an entire line here by doing this.  Note the correction to "Driver's licenses" also.  Finally, note that I actually added an "and" and replaced "He", and added the last part to the other sentence, as you need to understand that when peeps read, every time you have a full stop (period), it actually takes a split second longer - commas keep the thought going and you should use them whenever you can.

Hope this helps, bro.  Now, as I recommended earlier, jump in and read and comment on current participating members' scripts and they will most likely return the favor.

Quoted from Dreamscale "Tom opens the glove compartment and takes out three drivers licences. He hands one to Matt and one to Angie. He keeps one for himself." Rewritten as - "Tom opens the glove compartment, takes out three Driver's licenses.  He hands one to Matt, one to Angie, and keeps one for himself."

Tom opens the glove compartment, retrieves three Driver's
licenses, hands one to Matt, Angie, and keeps one for himself."

Yep...that works as well.

Thanks for the clarification, Dreamscale and Dustin.

Will get out the red pen and have another few reads of this one.

As far as reading and commenting on current participating members scripts. Is there anything you would like me to have a look at?

I do see the same profiles everywhere but am uncertain how to narrow down a search for their most recent scripts.

SS does seem like it can be a bit of a dumping ground.

I will be submitting a new and hopefully improved version of this soon so please don't waste your valuable time reading this. Will let you know when it's up for anyone that is interested in giving it another pass.

Thanks.

Hey man, the title got me as I live on the Gold Coast, haha.

Send me a pm when you have the revised draft ready. I'm quite keen for a read.

Churrr

Excellent, will do. Just putting the final touches on it. Won't be long.

Anything you want me to have a look at in the meantime?

Hi Warren,

Very keen to read this as an Aussie who has done schoolies week at Surfers.

I read to page 20.

I really like the concept despite it being done before as I love these types of films. However Doug, Tom, etc are just too clichéd. Alpha male, virgin, romantic couple... they're too familiar for an already clichéd story.

Nothing wrong with writing something that's been done to death, but try and create just a little more variety and originality in the central characters.

Hope this helps mate.

Tim.

Thanks for the read, Tim.

Does need a bit of work. Lots of  cliches in this for sure. I think now that I have the full story on paper, and a base to work from, hopefully I'll be able to pull something togeather.

As previously mentioned, I'm currently working on an edit. Will let everyone know when it's done and maybe it will be a better read.

Cheers

Send me the edited version when you're done Wazza.

Haven’t forgotten. I’ve done most of the editing.

Problem now being, I've looked at it so much that I just don't know what else to do. I know something is not quite right with the story but I'm stuck.

I’m not talking about how overly cliché' it is as I purposefully wrote it that way. I don’t believe we have an Aussie horror like this so in a sense it's different.

Give me a bit longer to figure it out, or I will send it as is, and maybe you can see or add something I can’t.

Cheers