Prom Night by R.J. Patteson - Short, Sci Fi, Fantasy - A scrawny nerd tries desperately to tell his crush something important on prom night. 11 pages - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hi R.J,

A nice little love story. Charlie is interesting and I liked him. Because the theme has been done in a whole movie this comes across for me like a condensed version of Ground Hog Day. But its fun, sweet and has a happy ending.

'Charlie jumps out of bed, puts on an oversized Michelangelo t- shirt (not the famous artist), adjusts his coke-bottle glasses, and storms out of the room.

HALLWAY - CONTINUOUS
His father is waiting for him outside the door.'

The formatting needs a little work here. You can write '

He storms out of the room into the..

HALLWAY
Where his father stands waiting for him.

You don't need to write continuous here because the action shows this.


'EXT. SARAH’S HOUSE - LATER
Charlie dives off the bike in the center of the yard. Tufts of grass erupt from the fall.'

This action seemed a little to abrupt, maybe add that he rides up off the road  and onto the front yard. show us a little more.


'EXT. SALON - AFTERNOON

Charlie is sweating profusely and chugging air.

Just as he arrives at the Salon, he can see SARAH (18), beautiful-- out of his league, get into the passenger side of her father’s car and drive away.'

This needs to be a bit clearer. i.e. Charlie throws his breaks on and stops in front of the Salon. He looks for Jess through the window. He doesn't see her. He looks out toward the parked cars and sees her getting into .....


'He looks on as BUCK (19, victory lap) and two of his cronies take turns pushing around DARREN (18), who’s just as nerdy as Charlie.'

Where have they come from? Are they outside the front door? Need to be more specific  as to where these guys are exactly.

It's always a golden rule to keep CUT TOO's out of a spec script. It is very tempting, but if you can get into a habit of not doing that it's a good one to get into. The crash scene probably doesn't need those written into it. the director will know what to do with it to make it effective.

When using numbers in the dialogue don't use digits. You have to write them out..tedious yes...


'Charlie looks Buck in the eyes. Summons everything he learned with the complimentary Karate classes he took at his local YMCA and --'

This is a cool scene, but you need to show that he has taken karate lessons at the Y, by letting him do a few maneuvers before he finally strikes. As it is written it's just in his head.

It's got good structure, it's fun, the dialogue is good overall.

Cheers
K

Quoted from Kirsten Hi R.J, A nice little love story. Charlie is interesting and I liked him. Because the theme has been done in a whole movie this comes across for me like a condensed version of Ground Hog Day. But its fun, sweet and has a happy ending. 'Charlie jumps out of bed, puts on an oversized Michelangelo t- shirt (not the famous artist), adjusts his coke-bottle glasses, and storms out of the room. HALLWAY - CONTINUOUS His father is waiting for him outside the door.' The formatting needs a little work here. You can write ' He storms out of the room into the.. HALLWAY Where his father stands waiting for him. You don't need to write continuous here because the action shows this. 'EXT. SARAH’S HOUSE - LATER Charlie dives off the bike in the center of the yard. Tufts of grass erupt from the fall.' This action seemed a little to abrupt, maybe add that he rides up off the road  and onto the front yard. show us a little more. 'EXT. SALON - AFTERNOON Charlie is sweating profusely and chugging air. Just as he arrives at the Salon, he can see SARAH (18), beautiful-- out of his league, get into the passenger side of her father’s car and drive away.' This needs to be a bit clearer. i.e. Charlie throws his breaks on and stops in front of the Salon. He looks for Jess through the window. He doesn't see her. He looks out toward the parked cars and sees her getting into ..... 'He looks on as BUCK (19, victory lap) and two of his cronies take turns pushing around DARREN (18), who’s just as nerdy as Charlie.' Where have they come from? Are they outside the front door? Need to be more specific  as to where these guys are exactly. It's always a golden rule to keep CUT TOO's out of a spec script. It is very tempting, but if you can get into a habit of not doing that it's a good one to get into. The crash scene probably doesn't need those written into it. the director will know what to do with it to make it effective. When using numbers in the dialogue don't use digits. You have to write them out..tedious yes... 'Charlie looks Buck in the eyes. Summons everything he learned with the complimentary Karate classes he took at his local YMCA and --' This is a cool scene, but you need to show that he has taken karate lessons at the Y, by letting him do a few maneuvers before he finally strikes. As it is written it's just in his head. It's got good structure, it's fun, the dialogue is good overall. Cheers K

Thanks.

Someone else mentioned the bike scene too. I wanted to have him wipe out in his urgency. But I guess it's a bit much.

Is the writing on numbers really a big deal? Someone mentioned that on one of my other scripts. When you introduce a character you put: JIM (47), not JIM (forty-seven) then you have the strict rule for everything else. I like to spell it out sometimes  if it's a "one", "two", "three"... but overall seems like a bogus rule.

In a different script I had a guy monologue about his odds of dying to different things... 1 in 47 chance....1 in 840,978... could you imagine if I wrote it down as "One in Eight-Hundred- and forty thousand-nine-hundred and seventy-eight?"

And I don't know if it's because I write scifi, but it comes up ALL THE TIME. So I just use numbers lol.

Hey R.J

Yeah when you are using lots of numbers in dialogue like that, it's a pain. I just looked it up. It's a general rule but I think in cases where you have tones of numbers you could break it.

https://johnaugust.com/2010/numbers-in-dialogue.