Hook, Line and Sinker by Alex Grimmett - Short -  Two men go on a fishing trip to bond, and the world is distorted by their interactions. 5 pages - pdf, format 8)

Hey Alex.

Whoa!  Huge blocks of action lines scrolling down to the first page.  Most here would say "less is more" and I agree.  Too much detail to start things off with.  Break it up and start peeling away all the unnecessary info that isn't imperative to the story.  A little detail is great but keep them light.  They should compliment the scene as opposed to taking over.  I would go along the lines of:

{

EXT. LAKE - DAY

A row boat sits idly on a placid lake.  Two men sit back to back, each with a fishing rod.

YOUNG(20's), dressed in a life jacket, stares out at the lake, deep in thought.  His wiry frame is overshadowed by WISE(50's) who is without a life jacket.

BIRD WHISTLES reach the boat from shore.  Wise adjusts his captain's hat and WHISTLES his own tune.  The song grows louder until it draws Young's attention.  He joins in.

A tug at Young's line ends the song.  Young grabs hold of the pole and fights to reel in the catch as his eyes burn with determination.  A few SPLASHES and short bursts of CLICKING from the rod.

It abruptly ends.  Young turns and presents Wise with a puny fish smaller than his hand.  Young frowns at Wise as he snorts and shakes his head.

}

Not perfect but separating each idea into smaller pieces and stripping it down not only makes it easier on the eyes but gets through the story faster.  Not everyone would agree with this method but I supposed that's my take on the matter.  BTW, four lines or less seems to be the rule of thumb for blocks of action lines.  I aim for three.

Best of luck to you, Alex.  Hoped this helped.

Johnny

Chunky as said before but I read til the end...I don't really get it. I don't really root or care for either character.  It is possible I missed the important stuff in the thick paragraphs. I tend to start skimming when it's thick writing. I think you could make something even better out of this though.

Best of luck with it.

It's not about how many lines of action you have. You write by camera shot. If a single camera shot takes 6 lines then guess how many you write?

OK, I read some of this... and it looks like you're a pretty decent writer, just a noob. You've got quite a bit to learn.

Screenwriting is far, far different to writing a story. You have to write in images and the here and now. Nobody begins to do anything, they are doing it. So instead of, he begins to run, he runs.

Read some scripts and note how they are written. I'm sure you'll get there. Good luck.

My advice would be to read a lot more scripts. You don't actually have many formatting issues aside from the fact that the action lines read like a novel and not a script. You say things like-
"Young is seen being catapulted into the ocean." This is wrong. You shouldn't have to tell us what is seen, you should just show us.
Its a common mistake writers make, even after a few years, so just keep writing. Cut the action lines way down and rewrite some of the dialogue. Hope this helps.
-Gavin

Hey Alex,

My best advice would be to read several scripts. The more you read the more the formatting will start to make sense to you. You have huge blocks of action lines. Try not to go over 4 lines, break up the lines.

Best of luck! Keep writing!

- Dirk

Hi Alex,

Liked the writing style, you have obviously written before, I would doubt you have written screenplays. Way too much action, you really need to tighten this up, liked the discriptions, just the ammount of it is unnecessary.

Didn't really get the story either but if you can shorten the action lines, I think you could be a successful writer.

Anyways hope this helped and the best of luck to you in the future.

>Praneel<

Alex

The first page is daunting, man. You need to tighten up this writing a lot.

Cut down the blocks of prose to no more than 4 lines.

Only include the necessary visual information. Short, punchy sentences speed up the read no end.

Take the first block of prose for example:

EXT. LAKE DAY

“Two men, YOUNG and WISE, are on a fishing trip, sitting on a
small rowboat situated in the middle of a lake. Young is a
wiry young chap in his mid 20s and wears a shirt and tie
beneath a restrictive life jacket. Wise is a heavy-set man
in his 50s, who is dressed more casually than his companion
and has declined the addition of a life jacket. Upon his
head sits a captain’s hat, shielding his face from the
assault of the summer sun.”

- This could be rewritten like this:

EXT. LAKE - DAY

“Two MEN sit in a small rowboat, fishing.

YOUNG (mid 20s) wiry physique, wears a shirt and tie under a tight life jacket.

Beside him, WISE (mid 20s) heavy set, casually dressed, no life jacket. He sports a captain’s hat.”

- That’s all you need. The key information is retained in half the words.


The rest of the script displays similar examples of over writing; you need to work on that.

Also I can predict already that Wise’s lack of life jacket it going to play a part here.
The whistling repartee is a nice touch. Its effectiveness though would depend solely on the actors, could come off sounding hammy if executed incorrectly.

“Wise scolds him”

-Where is the dialogue here? Is it a telepathic scold or what? ;)

I like the strange off kilter tone here though, the mysterious transportation of the boat to the ocean, the approaching storm all of which both men seem to be oblivious to. It gives the piece a sense of surrealism and creeping dread, hard to fathom whether events are real or not.

“For a few moments, the scene resembles one of those cartoon fights that become a dustball with limbs flying out of it.”

- I know exactly what you mean here but I don’t know how you would achieve it in a life action piece, especially in waist high water! Or do you mean “water” instead of “dustball”?

“decidely limp”

- This phrase amused me…even of “decidedly” is spelt wrong.

“Young sits down dutifully on the sand next to the older man.”

- Presuming “The Older Man” is Wise, how could this be since at the beginning you said they were both in their mid 20s?

“Young trots toward the trees with a machete in hand. He sets
about hacking away at the smaller ones, chips of wood flying
all over the place. After a bit of hard work and a few
splinters he has a sizeable collection of large wooden
sticks. He cuts off some vines for rope and begins to pack
the lumber into bundles.”

He drags the bundles back toward the hut and dumps them on
the beach. Wise does not look toward him, but continues to
watch his line intently.

Young begins to use the vines and the lumber to build a
small raft. When he is done, he looks at it proudly and
dusts off his hands."

- This would work much better as a montage I reckon.

Mmm, got the end at couldn’t really make much sense of it unfortunately. I thought the life jacket would play a part but alas it was a red herring, that’s fair enough. However, I didn’t get the whole slave and master hierarchy of Young and Wise when they were stranded on the desert island.

Then the leave the island, fish on a luxurious yacht before being back on the boat and the captain’s hat is passed. What are we supposed to take away from this? What are you trying to say here?

Given the odd tone of the piece it could well have been a fanciful dream or a story told by Wise. It seems that Young earned his stripes if you will by his hard graft on the island but why? Why was Yound so willingly the slave to Wise anyway? Where did the hula girl come from?

As you can tell I have a lot of questions, not a bad thing I suppose if you can convince me that something deeper is at work here on some level but for a 4 pager it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  And since it is so brief this shouldn’t be the case. I can’t see how I could’ve missed much.

Either way, I would love to hear your explanations.

Oh and just to reiterate as a word of friendly advice; sort out the action lines, read other scripts, see how it’s done. This kind of laborious writing is turn off number one for most people.

Best of luck

Col.

Hi Alex

As mentioned by the above comments, you seem to have the makings of a short novel writer. It's quite easy for potential readers to get put off by seeing such huge blocks of prose taking up an entire page. Definitely need to work on parring down your descriptions. Less is more, as is the motto on this site.

I read the script anyway to get an idea of what you were going for, but sadly, the story kinda fell flat for me. And I do confess that for most parts, I was skimming through to try and get to the end.

Definitely need some serious work on this script. Keep at it, bud :)

-Silva Sly-