Walking Possession by Ed Jones (cartertaylor) - Short - A business man turns to the wrong man in a cash crisis. His troubles deepen till help comes unexpectedly. 6 pages - pdf, format 8)

Tried to give this a read. It got a bit confusing but here are some of the things that caused it:

Starting with the first slug...why do you use two dashes. I haven't seen this before. And you don't really need the Shabby in it IMO. The first passage reads weird to me..the meanness?? What does that mean in reference or contrast to the gold the man's decked out in??

Then MIKE starts out about a possession order, which I'm guessing maybe the other guy handed him like some sort of eviction thing? I'm not sure because it's unclear in the writing so far. The only reason this bothers me so bad is that it's at the very beginning of the script, and I'm already confused.

On down, the dialogue about the bag of s...t is too long and beats around the bush to me. Read your dialogue out loud. This helps me sometimes, even though I'm still not that good with my dialogue.

Pg 3 when you have the slug SMART OFFICE to me..you don't need SMART in it at all. Maybe I'm wrong...not sure why you are including adjectives in the slug.

Then this guy goes around trying to sell the diamonds, the first dealer he goes to sends him to another dealer...then the girl with the tiger.

I'm sorry, I'm getting confused and this isn't going anywhere for me. I will try to pick it up later...stopping half way through for now.

Advice, read read read a lot of scripts..in here...online ...anywhere you can get your hands on them...and then rewrite. And keep on trucking ...I'm in the beginning stage myself .. so I still spend more time reading than writing. Good luck with if. If you do a rewrite I'll be glad to read again.

Hey Ed,

I owed you a read so decided to crack your script open and give it a read.

The main problem for me is the story, it feels like it ended just when it was getting to the best part. Also you have to ask the question, why is Ashok helping Barry? He seems like a powerful guy with contacts when storming into Mike’s office so why not just beat the info out of Barry instead of doing a deal. Seems to convenient for me

It’s called Walking Possession and Barry is our protag but I didn’t feel for his story or situation because I didn’t know it, we concentrated on Mike’s stolen gems. I think you need to start this with Barry and what has happened to him, why is he being given a walking possession, overspending, in with the wrong crowd? What has led him to this path with Mike, how do they know each other?

I just think that we need to know more about Barry before we can care about him, does he have a wife and child at home to support, is that why he is going to these lengths with Mike? Obviously lots of questions are raised here but hopefully they will help you with a rewrite.

Onto the writing, I didn’t have many problems to be honest and think you’ve done okay overall. I can’t remember but I think this is your first script, apologies if I’m wrong. Like Dena, I thought the opening passage read very awkward and the slugs didn’t seem right with shabby, plush and so on but I understand why you did this. They all don’t have to be offices and that could solve your problem with here.

Look out for the consistency in your scripts, it’s a pet peeve of mine and I’d expect people to tell me about in my own work if they spot it. What I mean is the ages on first intro, you start like:

“BARRY, 24,” and then halfway through move to

“FRANZIL, (65)” with the brackets,

I know, petty but consistency like I said. It helps the read IMO.

Also keep an eye on character movements. In one scene it became confusing for me. Ashok stands and then moves closer to Barry, next thing he stands suddenly? I thought he was already standing? Try to be clearer with the descriptions.

I’m afraid this wasn’t for me and it’s mainly because it felt like a middle of a story. I feel like I missed the beginning and the end and just got the middle segment.

I would personally work on Barry’s individual story more and tie it into this story more. Maybe the stolen diamonds could have played some role in his predicament somehow? Maybe he could think about stealing Mike’s diamonds to help with his own agenda, just throwing out ideas. All the best with it

Good luck and keep writing. :)

Steve

The ending seemed out of place.  There's no reason that Ashok needs to help Barry once he knows who stole his diamonds.  If Ashok and Barry made a deal over the polishing residue, then maybe there'd be something to tie them together.  

There weren't any glaring problems with format but some of it seemed a little off.  Everything could be trimmed down as well.