Damsel by J.C. Young - Thriller - A mobster’s junkie girlfriend is on the run and out for revenge when his crime family thinks she’s a snitch. 104 pages - pdf, format 8)

Hey JC, if you want to get reads, you have to give them out as well...and usually first to establish yourself, so members recognize your name.

I stopped after 4 pages.  It's not necessarily bad, but it is overwritten, and very dense.  It felt more like 10 pages I read, but very little actually took place.

A few things that will hopefully help...

Keep your passages no longer than 4 lines.  Break them up based on "ideas" or "shots".  Every time a new idea or shot is brought up, set it off in its own passage.  This will make the read much easier...but...it will also increase your page length, so you have to be careful to only write what's necessary.

V.O.'s are frowned upon by most, but we still continue to see them heavily used in movies, so don't think I'm telling you that you can't or shouldn't use them.  You've got alot here early on, and for me, it was a major distraction, especially in the very beginning.

There are a number of little issues, technical, formatting and the like that can be cleaned up, but all in all, not bad at all, IMO.

Jump in here and introduce yourself.  Read some other members scripts, as it will help you establish yourself and learn quite a bit in the process.  As I always say, you can learn so much from reading bad scripts, poorly written scripts.  Just like you can learn so much from watching crappy movies.

Hope to see you on the boards and hope my brief thoughts hep.

Take care.

So, I liked your log-line at the beginning.  However, towards the end it looses it's hook.  Instead of, "...thinks she's a snitch" you could have worded that better.

Onto the script.  I, personally, don't mind (V.O.) at all, and did not know it was frowned upon.  However, if you plan on using it, it'd be better if it looked correct, instead of "(VO) use "(V.O.)"

I agree with Dreamscale.  Large chunks of text is never good.  It's unprofessional.  When writing actions lines, try to keep them to 3 lines or less.  Otherwise, it won't look right.  From the short amount I took a look at, it seems good so far.

The plot is alright, nothing new or exciting.  But your writing is great, to me anyway.  The first page (regardless of V.O.) sets up a very interesting story already.  

I noticed that you tend to use "lay" instead of "lie" a lot.  Personally, to me, I think it would read much better as "lie."  Like, for example, on the first page you say: "...lay on the concrete" when I think it sounds better as... "a blue-steel .38 revolver lies on a concrete floor in an abandoned UV-lit office."

Virginia is a fierce character.  I like her so far.  A strong-minded character with a certain snarkiness that makes her likable, but not overdone too much as to make us hate her.  The scenes at the nightclub were enough to keep me writing, you got your flow back here with pithy paragraphing.

Although this isn't a genre/movie I personally like, I think it has potential.  Just a few technical issues, and that's it.

Good luck!

-- Curt

Lay vs. lie - look it up.

Living things lie.  Inanimate objects lay.

But in the example given, it's incorrect as written anyway, as it's the wrong tense.

Just a heads up.

i have no problems with voiceover, if its written correctly. What I generally dont like is voiceover from a character who already has dialogue in that particular scene. It can get messy sometimes.

Will come back and read more soon.

-Gavin

J.C. ... pity you're not around, you have a little something here. There's a nice style to your writing.

The V.O stuff makes it feel a little dated, but it works okay. I'm not going too far if you're not around.

Lay vs Lie: lay requires an object, lie does not.

FADE is normally written: FADE IN:

and INT/EXT normally has a period after it.

- this is worth working on; hope to see you around.

Living things lie.  Inanimate objects lay.