On Site by Dale Trett - Series, Comedy - An aspiring writer begins on a career path that he doesn't feel is for him. 30 pages - pdf, format 8)

Okay, a couple of things here. The logline needs some work. It's very bland and needs some serious pop. Read it like you were a producer. Does that catch your interest? Second, there's too much dialogue. I only read the first few pages, but as I scrolled down I saw there were entire pages between even a single line of action. I understand that you might be looking for the focus to be on the dialogue, but the characters aren't even doing anything particularly funny- more of just a back and forth. Let the action speak for the characters. It's much more effective and you'll get more out of it. Keep it going.

Hey Dale.

Kurt's right about the loglline.  Based on the logline, why should we care about this writer?  Nothing pulls us into this story with any interest.

FADE IN should be on the left.  Slugline is either day or night unless absolutely imperative to the story.  Otherwise describe it in the action lines.  This scene isn't really set up in terms of description.  I know that short is sweet but we need something to go off of.

So much talking and no action.  You have Dean roll is eyes once and a few other unfilmable action lines cutting through the action but other than that, just talking.  I would suggest smoothing over the tirade from the parents into other scenes instead of just bombarding us with these four pages of dialogue.

I hope this helped.  Best of luck.

Hey Dale,

I agree with the other guys about the logline. There just isn’t all that much there. Put something in about the story, setting and/or the main character. It needs something more distinctive.

About the script:

The good,

-I think the premise is pretty interesting and has potential to go in a lot of different directions.

-You developed a lot of distinguishable characters in a fairly entertaining way; as well as in a relatively small number of pages.

-Had some funny bits. The Charlie Chaplin line gave me a smirk.

The not so good,

-Right off the bat I think you should give the mother a name, especially if she’s going to be a recurring character. He can still call her ‘mum’ and your reader will understand.

-There is definitely an abundance of dialogue as Kurt pointed out. Most of it is pretty unnecessary. For example:

On the bottom of page 8 the dialogue that starts with Dave saying “How are you finding it so far?” and ending before Spike jumps in. Most of it isn’t necessary because it’s not progressing the story at all and it’s not divulging any character information, so it’s essentially just chatter and it slows the read down quite a bit.

-You need more laughs! There are a few decent jokes throughout but I think the pointless dialogue and slow progression of the story spaces everything out too much and the laughs seem sparser than they actually are.

Keep up the writing.

Colin

Hi Dale,
Call me old fashioned, but I believe comedy scripts should contain at least two jokes per page. I was struggling to find one gag and I went as far as page six. I thought you had the mechanics of the script in the correct order but the story just seemed to hang around, looking bored and left. As you are striving to produce scripts for a visual media I think you should try and get some visual gags in. In my opinion scripts containing all dialogue are great for radio. Keep trying and don’t give up.
Regards, John.