Pattison Hill by Glen Mackenzie - Horror - Pattison Hill is nowhere particular, but when the apocalypse hits and you are fighting for your life, it can be your whole world. 96 pages - pdf, format 8)

Is the writer around and active on the boards? If so, I will give this a read.

Yeah. IS the writer here?  I don't want to make the same mistake again.

Anyways, I'll just say that will there are some good ideas, it's fundamentally flawed and needs a lot of work. If the writer proves his existence I'll be happy to explain.

I'm here, had issues with my account validation. Plus the Easter Bunny was here. I'd love to hear what you have to say (though I am already rewritting it to include more character depth)

I started this today and unfortunately stopped around page 15 or 16. I then skimmed through the next 15 pages or so to see where we were headed.

Your use of I/E or E/I slug headings are a little unnecessary and confusing because you seem to only focus on one or the other. Don't be so ambiguous and save it for the shooting script.

Pad or cut your narration to avoid orphans.

I found several odd action lines that do not belong and sound more like dialogue than action. It pulls me out of the read because it feels as though you, the writer, are talking to your characters instead of showing us what is happening. Things like:

"What was that Jack?"
"But what’s that on the fence Jack?"
"Did he hear that?"
"Was it the wind?"

The opening is a little dull and unless any of these characters show up later, the first 7 pages are wasted on characters that don’t matter. I would trim this down to a page or 2 which would more effectively throw the reader into the story instead of making them wade through 7 or 8 pages (minutes) to get to the meat of the story. You risk losing your reader or viewer.

After those initial 7 pages, nothing really important seems to happen over the next 24 pages (minutes) other than the group settling into the house and doing boring stuff. That is a long time for no real story advancing action to be occurring. I am sure you were trying to use it to build up your characters but it seemed too much and wasn't capturing my attention or curiosity. Hence the skipping forward in the script.

I know people around here really hate when this is brought up but... Your use of all those "We" see this and "We" see that, is just a cop out for creative writing. There really is a way to write creatively with out having to grab us by the chin, point us in a certain direction and tell us to see that.

Just a quickie example:

EXT. DESERTED STREET CORNER/CITY - DAY

A series of televisions play loudly in a shop window,
playing all the same channel.

               REPORTER
          I repeat. The centre for disease
          control has advised everyone to
          stay in doors and to avoid the
          infected at all cost.

We pan out from the window and we see the street is
completely deserted. Rubbish blows down the street, an odd
car abandoned.

We pan out further and we can see the entire city is empty
and deserted.

Can be done like:
EXT. DESERTED STREET CORNER - DAY

A series of televisions in a shop window play at full volume. The
same channel fills each of the screens.

               REPORTER
          I repeat. The center for disease
          control has advised everyone to
          stay indoors and to avoid the
          infected at all cost.

Rubbish blows down the deserted street and past an abandoned car.

EXT. CITY - DAY

The entire city is empty and deserted. The normal sounds of
big city life are eerily absent.

--------

That isn't perfect but it will serve for the example.

I plan on finishing this when I get off work tonight but I thought I would leave you with my initial impressions and of course, these are just my opinions. I do like the topic of the story and so far it feels a little "I Am Legend" to me.

Peace.

JCShadow

Thanks for the words so far. I have rewritten it, and fixed up alot of things (some you mentioned) This was essentially a first draft, written fairly quickly so I know there's alot of work still to do.

On a side note if anyone reading this knows of some good english speaking horror connections in Germany, i'd love to know. I was born and raised in Australia, but now I'm married in Germany, and all my writing pals are still down under.

I'll try to get this read in the next few days. I'm a sucker for the apocalypse.

Hey Glen, you've mentioned this is a first draft and I hope the re-write has gone well. I'll post my initial thoughts on the first few pages in case they help.

There are some glaring SLUG problems: we're in JACK AND KARA'S BEDROOM and then the next scene moves to HALLWAY WILL AND SARAH'S HOUSE. Maybe just use INT. HOUSE. BEDROOM and then HALLWAY? Keep it simple. I agree with JC that the use of I/E needs sorting out - it's really clunky and distracting.

When Jack looks out of the window you use "We follow". Best just to use his POV? Alternatively we could just go outside with a new header, then back to the bedroom.

"But what's that on the fence Jack?" There's a few examples of this in the script. I'd try to avoid it in a screenplay altogether, to be honest.

Also a lot of scenes that start with somewhere being dark or dimly lit and we cant make out things. This is standard horror technique but they way you give it us isn't reading well. Also, a tad repeatative.

A general note - the TV tells us in the first scene "avoid the infected". Apart from the shadowy lurker outside Jacks bedroom, I didn't get to see one and I read upto page twenty. In a horror flic, this seems like a long time to go without seeing the beasties. Unless whatever else is going on without them is really engaging, it might be a hard sell for genre fans.

Thanks for posting and I would like to see what you do with this. It's a first draft, so don't take any criticism's to heart. Good luck.

:)

Thanks Basket Case. I appreciate the ideas. I cut out all the 'we see' sort of crap and the I/E. Rookie mistake.... I also rewrote the begining, cutting out the family scene at the start and make something with a bot more spunk. I should re post it and see what people think.
Problem is there are a lot of good horror scripts on this site. Buyers market