Rain by Michael Stuart - Thriller - A troubled, New York City Detective joins forces with a female, forensic psychology intern, with her own dark and mysterious past, to track down a serial murderer who is preying on criminals and other deviants.      110 pages - doc, format 8)

Only got through about 4 pages.  I see this is taken from a novel you wrote?  Interesting.

Watch your passive verbiage (ing verbs).  They don't work in a screenplay, at least not as much as you're using them.

Watch your blocks of text (prose). Don't have paragraphs over 4 lines. They don't read well or look good.

No need to continually capitalize your characters name. Only cap it when a character is first introduced.

You had a kill in here and it was buried in a block of text and because of that, came off as very unimportant, and dull.  I would imagine this is a big scene and the first real action in your script. You need to play it up much, much more.

Watch your slugs and make sure that your action actually takes place within what your slug says.  For instance, you have EXT and then INT scenes with the Range Rover.  Yes, you can see inside a car in an EXT shot, but considering it's pouring rain and night, you can't see much.  Intro your character with an INT shot.  When the car parks in a lot, I would think you'd want an EXT shot.

Hope this helps a bit. read some scipts in here and give some feedback and you'll get some reads on your script as well, or simply ask to trade reads with people that have current scripts up.

Take care.

Mike, Congrats on the novel and a draft of a working script. I read the first and last 10 pages of your script. I was not inspired to read more because:

It read like a book with too much telling and not enough showing. And large blocks of description and dialogue too. It’s page 3 before anyone says anything. This may have to do with adapting your book to a screenplay.   It’s tricky for anyone.

It’s predictable as a police procedural piece.  The end was also expected with the villain being the guy introduced on page 6 and the police detective gets the girl.  Nothing wrong with predictable, but it should be nailed down.

The title Rain did not work for me. Anything else?

Gary

I read the first few pages of this, on the way out the door.  Can't read all of it now, but did like what I read.  Your use of descriptions is very good.  It reads smoothly and sets the scene nicely.  I noticed that some are having problems with your paragraph-like action.  One simple suggestion...

"A young girl is looking out her window while rain is pouring into her room.  She starts to close the window, stops, and sees light in outside barn"

Watch out for "is looking"...."is pouring" and "starts to close the window".  This should read --

"A young girl looks out her window as rain pours into her room.  As she closes the window, she notices LIGHT in an outside barn".

This doesn't seem like much of a change, but if you do this in all of your action, you'll cut twenty or thirty pages from your script.  Try to cut your action down by using fewer and fewer words.  

"A YOUNG GIRL stares from an open window as RAIN pours into the room.  As she shuts the window, notices LIGHT from an outside BARN."      

Thanks for the responses.  I apologize for not being more active in this - I thought that my attempt to post RAIN on this site was unsuccessful.  I appreciate the comments and feedback.  I have reworked this several times and will also include your useful suggestions.  

In terms of "predictability" - the ending of the book was anything but predictable - but I was convinced by my former literary agent to change the ending.  Against my better judgment - I did.  

I will continue working on this and hope to be a contributing member of this community.  Thanks again.