Ransom Reward by Simon Parker - Short, Drama - Two brothers violently clash, when one brings home a badly hurt billionaire, and wants to hold him for a ransom. 15 pages - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hello, here's some feedback.

I like the concept, but look over the logline, there are punctuation mistakes.

Code Frantic banging on the front door

Remember to capitalize sounds. "Franctic BANGING on the front door"

Code Jona snaps his arm free from Ben

I would advise for you to change "snaps" for something else, it doesn't read right for the kind of action you're trying to convey. Unless he actually does snap his arm.

There are a couple of lines that seem unnatural and too exposition heavy.

Code BEN To get a better life you have to be willing to do anything. I'm willing

This is an example. There's gotta be a better way to reveal his motives, rather than just throwing everything on the dialogue right on the second page. It just feels too obvious.

Code I saved him, I want something for that, but I'm not going to get anything unless I ask for it.

See, here we already get a look into his psyche, and this line isn't forced like the last one. As the story progresses, if the writing is solid enough, we will know everything you want us to know about the character, don't sandwich in his motives through expository dialogue. I would advice you to keep this line, and get rid of the previous one mentioned.

There are run-on sentences on your action lines, I would advise checking.

This was interesting, but there's got to be a better way to deliver this story. Polish the dialogue, action lines, characters. A lot of what the characters did seemed really unreasonable to me, especially with Chelsea. It just feels like there are abrupt switches in personality, and no crescendo towards that shift.

Something that I found fascinating is the idea that heroes get nothing for being heroes, he saved this man, and he believes he needs something in return, I like that. I just feel like you needed more of that displayed in his motives, and also see how the siblings react to this kind of mentality. It would've sold the script much more.

Don't take the criticism too personal, there are many of us here with different opinions.
Good luck,
Luis

Some notes

This one has some writing issues that  need to be addressed.  See the other comments.

I think you might make this one better if you add some variety.  When Jona can't reason with his brother, can he pretend to go along only to be found out and punished.  I like that you add the female, and she waffles.  Make it shorter and add some reason why this brother suddenly has to kidnap someone.  

Best
Richard

Hi Simon,

I found this really long at 15 pages considering more than half of it is just the brothers going back and forth and back and forth about the same thing. It gets very monotonous very fast.

The whole ransom thing seemed very badly thought out. A billionaire is going to have the best security and tracking ever. He wouldn't have stayed missing for long.

Very anti-climatic but that comes with the assumption that it was building to a climax and it didn't feel that way at any point.

I think this could easily be cut down to 5 pages and lose nothing.

I also found how quickly Ben escalated the violence quite jarring to the story.

You also seem to use the same slug over and over. If nothing changes other than the passing of time, it will flow a lot better if you just use LATER as opposed to the same full slug.

Definitely needs work.

good luck.