The Raven (The Secretary and the Mule) by Amber Dawn Lee - Short - A drug mule steals keyloads of cocaine from the wrong people. 12 pages - pdf, format 8)

Hey Amber.

So first off, the title page is a problem.  Nothing is filled out so you might wanna double check your script before posting.  The title is actually on page one which isn't correct.

Generally you want to keep your action lines at four lines or less.  Some of your lines read awkwardly.  "...GAMBLERS hover the area vaguely."  It just sounds strange to me.

You use the SHOTS OF tool which I don't recomend in a spec script.  To me it's a choice geared for a director than the writer.

I don't know who the voice over belongs to.  I'm guessing it's Nancy so you should put her name next to the V/O or V.O.

"Credits Roll".  Again, not really something the writer would concern themselves with.

Quite a bit of your action lines are cluttered with unnecessary detail.  For example, your paragraph following INT. DIVE BAR can be cleaned up as well as the first.

"Nancy drinks at the bar.  The SKINNY BARTENDER wipes down the bar.
He watches a TRASHY COUPLE make out at a table."

That's all I would put.  It's not perfect but you get the point.  You could bring up the alcoholic at the end of the bar later if it's important.  Hopefully this helps out a bit.  I suggest you read some scripts here on the site and get a feel for how it's done.  Best of luck.

Amber, I'm sorry, but this is a hot mess.  John hit a lot of the stuff that was wrong with the first page.

Here are two or three things that jumped out at me in addition to what John brought up:

Page 1:
In your slug line:  "INT: DIVE DAY-BAR", you have the time of day inserted in the location.

"the SKINNY BARTENDER wipes down the bar for the hundredth time."  That's an unfilmable, unless you plan on showing the bartender actually wiping down the bar that many times.

You need to give MAN a name.  No reason to keep his identity a secret, unless I'm missing something.

Page 2:
"They said the secret to distilling was given to them by the God’s."  s/b "gods" with no apostrophe.

"I’d rather have more papercuts."  That doesn't make sense if she hadn't had any papercuts up to that point.  She probably should say something like "I'd rather die from a thousand papercuts."

You have the word bartender all alone as action.  What is that supposed to be?

NANCY
Okay (Like wow, you’re the man)

That's an awkward parenthetical placement and wording.  It should come after the character name to show how she is speaking.

Better would be:
NANCY
(suitably impressed)
Okay...

That's where I stopped, because it just needs a lot of work.  Read a lot of well-written scripts and learn from those works and you'll be on your way to becoming a better writer.  Best of luck!

Gary

Hi Amber,

John and Gary seemed to have covered most of the standout things which need attention, so I'll try not to go over old ground.

I actually read it all the way through and the guys are quite right in saying it needs a lot of work. Whilst there is a short story here, it gets lost with the pages of bang on the nose dialogue and improbable situations.

For example, if I had stolen $1m from a drugs gang, would I really walk into a bar and start telling a perfect stranger that's what I'd done? And then agree to take them to where it was stashed, all within the space of 10 minutes? Probably not, no.


At the bottom of page 2, there seems to be something missing as you have the loose word  'bartender' running around. I'm not sure if there was a paragraph missed out or if it should have been deleted.

The ending was as expected and I quite liked how it panned out, but not the way it was written, I'm afraid.

Read a few scripts on here and then give this a rewrite.

Kip.