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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    Unproduced Screenplay Discussion    Sci Fi and Fantasy Scripts  ›  Pickerman The Great Moderators: bert
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Don
Posted: September 23rd, 2016, 5:32pm Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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Pickerman The Great by Richard Rivera - Sci Fi - A dull as toast,  military cook becomes the unwitting pawn of a treacherous general who intends to seize the crown from his uncle the king. 103 pages - pdf, format


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BenL
Posted: September 25th, 2016, 6:31am Report to Moderator
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I read the first 5 pages, then I gave up. I love sci-fi but this is just not my cup of tea. It reads like Starship Troopers...

You're also introducing way too much characters within the first pages. The microwave joke on page 5 put the final nail in the coffin. Is this supposed to be a comedy? The joke is just so misplaced and it's totally dull that the CAPTAIN doesn't know who/what he's talking to on the bridge of his own ship...

Good luck anyway.
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Stumpzian
Posted: September 25th, 2016, 7:46am Report to Moderator
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Quoted from BenL
Is this supposed to be a comedy?


With all due respect, how could you even ask? After reading your comment, I also read the first five, then four more. It's one gag after another. (I laughed at the "thousands" of fighter spaceships trying to avoid hitting the dead body.)  

Henry





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Bogey
Posted: September 25th, 2016, 11:02am Report to Moderator
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I have to agree with Henry. It's obviously a comedy from the opening lines of the Narrator.

I'm not saying it's funny, just that it's a comedy.

I also didn't think it had too many characters in the opening pages - seemed easy enough to follow.

Anyway, it is well written, just not really a genre that excites me. Good luck though.
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BenL
Posted: September 26th, 2016, 3:58am Report to Moderator
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Well, it's not marked as comedy, that's why I was expecting something more "serious". But maybe the writer just didn't see the "additional genre" text field.
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FMLS
Posted: May 16th, 2017, 8:01pm Report to Moderator
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The Starship Troopers comparison got me to read it lol. The intro with the Marines commercial definitely has that sorta vibe (only, more over the top and comedic), but it’s not representative of the tone throughout the rest of the movie. It goes from Starship to Space Balls very quickly, and the opening is somewhat misleading about what the reader’s actually getting into to -- it suggests that the film will primarily be joking about military bravado and the glorification of war and gore, but that’s not the case. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but I think focusing on a clear theme would make everything work better as a whole.
As a quick example about what I mean, on pg 2 the little girl on the advert calls their enemies cockroaches. I think it’d be more interesting if she called them pansies or little girls, as that’d be more telling about the type of culture they live in and the type of story you're telling.


Moving on, though…

I really liked Joshua. He was aloof but surprisingly capable, always pulling through when they were in trouble. He defied my expectations and made the story more interesting. This was especially contrasted in comparison to Pickerman and Clarise who were, for the most part, generic and uninspired.

My main suggestion is to give more focus to Pickerman and the journey he undergoes -- from wanting to see combat and become a badass space marine, to actually becoming a captain of his own ship and realizing that war isn’t all that he had it cut out to be. I feel like that’s what you wanted to do, but it didn’t quite shine through. On pg 75 he has a breakthrough moment where he realizes that he doesn’t want to kill and isn’t right for the job, but this is the first time he’s been confronted with death or with having to make decisions that could result in the death of others. There was not setup for this internal conflict and as a result the moment feels contrived and unearned. Had there been an earlier scene where his actions cause someone’s death (or something of the sort), the reversal later on would work better and the whole narrative would come full circle from the first scene with the morbid space Marine commercial.
That really is the biggest thing I think you’re missing right now (overarching theme and character development for Pickerman). Good luck!

* Real quick, on pg 14, that “yours is the other ship” scene has been done a trillion times by now, but I think it could work if you emphasized that Pickerman’s reaction to the shitty ship were still of amazement. It’d subvert the cliche a little and make him that much more likable to the audience.


Formatting notes:
- Looks like the margins are off on the first page. Not a huge deal, but it’d make me worried that you were trying to tamper with the page count.
- Pg 17, there’s no need for “filtered” in every parenthetical. You could have it just on the first parenthetical or on the initial line of action description. You should have a (V.O) tag on each, though.
- Pg 24 You’ve got superimposed text and action description on the same line, which is confusing.

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