Curfew by Adam Nadworniak - Short, Horror - In a city plagued by youth violence the city has to use its final deterrent. all youths under eighteen are implanted with a device called the CUREFEW which will make sure they don't leave home after sundown. if they do they get four warnings and then after the fourth warning the device in the youths head explodes killing. 17 pages - pdf, format 8)

I'm going to review as I read...

First off, you have three title pages. One that isn't filled out, another that is filled out, and yet the name of the screenplay at the top of the first page. Pick which way you want to have it (hopefully not the first one).


Page 1: Never, EVER use 'we see' in a screenplay unless you plan on directing this.

- Parenthesis aren't supposed to be on the side of the character name. It needs to be under it.

- You have Ben talking to himself too much. For everything he sees, he says something like, "What the hell is that?" or "What the hell is going on?" You can take that out, and only have him say it once (maybe twice, but that's it).

Page 2: You have an entire action sentence that's in CAPS. Change it to lowercase.

- Your action paragraphs are way too long. Cut them down to about 3 lines per paragraph. It makes it look cleaner and more professional.

- Okay, you have Ben asking these questions to a recorded tape and Malcom immediately answers like he's able to hear them. I don't think many people do that now these days.

- When Malcom is talking about the family who lost their father/husband, leave out the "Now the wife of the officer is a widow and the kids are fatherless."

Page 3: Okay too much dialogue. Cut it down some or write in some action. It's too much dialogue for one page, and now it seems like Ben and Malcom are having a conversation face to face, since Ben is asking questions, and Malcom is answering them.

Page 6-7: These 'we sees' are getting really annoying. Please, take them away.

Page 9: So the kids suddenly decide to break the curfew when they just got done saying they were scared? Work up on this dialogue also. It's a bit iffy.

Page 13: "BEN
Oh, my god, she’s dead! She’s
fucking dead! They killed her! They
fucking killed her! Oh, my god!
They killed Jennifer! Jesus Christ!"

I think he made his point. Cut that down some.

- You're repeating a lot. Everyone is saying that they want to go home and how much it hurts. It's getting annoying.

Page 14: So now Ben is so angry that he forgets about the pain? I'm a bit confused.

Finished...finally.

This was a pain for me to read, with all the 'we sees' and clumped up paragraphs. You repeat a lot of your dialogue like "Let's go home!" and "It hurts!" and "This is such bullshit. They're lying!"

What about the parents? Do they know about it?

You need to work up on this. Good luck next time.

Sean

A Clockwork Orange meets Battle Royale.

Unlike the last poster, i found it quite enjoyable to read, but then i skipped a lot of the unnecessary description.

One problem with your writing is that you over describe everything. It's easily corrected. You don't need your characters commenting on what they see for instance, we can see prefectly well what is happening on the screen.

There are some very interesting topics that you touch upon in this script but I don't think you get deep enough into the ethics of situation which is for me where the real story lies. . Notions of innocence, can people change, mind control, civil liberties, liberty vs freedom, individual freedom vs liberty of society.

Instead it turns into a very action based film in which everyone dies. It was well-paced, even exciting at times although I didn't agree with the morality of the film which seems to be that these kids deserve to die.

Not bad though, there is enough in there to convince me that you have the skills to improve.

Remember the adgae : SHOW NOT TELL.

Alwyas keep that in mind and you won't go far wrong.