Life Goes On by Simon Parker (skp) - Short, Drama - Her ex-husband has come back for his one year old son, she doesn't want to let him go, but knows her ex-husband can give him a life that she cannot. 16 pages - pdf, format 8)

LIFE GOES ON

I'm going to start by saying I'm not a pro at screensriting, I'm self taught. So, my review of your script may not have the most solid advice.

My Opinion: The story was okay. I got what was going on in it, but you just got too much going on. It's a short, so try and keep it short. You had a few scenes where characters were just sitting there in silence, or eating chinese food. Those things didn't seem to move the story forward, in fact, it stalled it quite a bit for me. You had so many unnecessary scenes, it really made the flow of your story excessively clunky. Honestly, you could probably cut out some characters and just focus on John and Sarah, maybe keep a friend, maybe.

Format & Grammar: The format is solid. Your grammar needs some work though. I know we all mistype words or type too fast (Im very guilty of this) but its worth going over just to see because seeing a misspelled word or broken phrase really disengages a reader from the story. That's very hurtful to a drama like yours where (I may be wrong) the story relies on character development and dialouge.

Characters: I really felt you had too much going on in this script. Too many characters, and too many scenes with nothing pushing your story forward. John and Sarah are obviously the main characters, maybe more so Sarah, but there's not much development between the two. (SPOILER) Finding out she cheated on him was done nicely, thought that was well done. But, I feel your characters are too stale at times. I say focus on your main characters next time, and develop them a bit more.

Conclusion: I say get rid of the fat Simon, and you got yourself a pretty good drama here. Honestly I was more interested in John and Sarah's relationship before things got bad, and when they did, I wanted to just hear and watch them. Overall a decent attempt, but could be done better. Good luck with your future scripts and re-writes.

I get the premise of you trying to convey when a parent loses a child even if it's that they are trying to be unselfish for that child and do it freely for the sake of the child. I would have liked to see (on the screen) maybe a point where the mother gets on a bus and gives the sense that she's leaving with the child. But, then through gestures and facial expressions of sorrow and resignation..a montage of a fairly long bus trip leads her back to the baby's father and she place him in his arms, kisses him and walks away.