Scars (A Soldier's Story) by Remy McNamara - Short, Drama - A combat veteran struggles with the loss of a friend, PTSD, thoughts of suicide, and what is best for his family. 14 pages - pdf format

New writer interested in feedback on this work

Hey Remy,

I'm not sure if you're going to show up and read this...but, I read your script.
I'm a huge fan of stories like this and have written several myself. While I like the story, there are some things you should be aware of.

The story of an Army/military vet with PTSD has pretty much be done every which way you can think of. You really have to think up a twist in order to make it not look like every other story about PTSD.  In your particular case, this dude is just messed up and angry and we see him show it in a few different ways but then what? Nothing seems to happen....

Your writing is fine, but I'd break up some of those action paragraphs. You have large blocks in there. A quick reader is going to take one look at this and quit. I'd say this short would be much longer than the 15 pages you have here.

There are a few other "screenplay writing" errors in there, but I tend to ignore those. Some people might chime in and give you better advice than I can on exactly how to format your script.

I'm not an expert but feel free to check out the script my writing partner and I did that is very similar. I even produced it a few years ago. It'll give you a chance to read a script like yours and see how it ends up on the screen.

Keep it up!

Link to script thread
http://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?m-1363300362/

Short Film
https://vimeo.com/85844863


B

Hey Brandon,

   I apologize for the late reply but I just managed to get access to the forums. I did read your reply not long after you had posted it which gave me a good amount of time to consider what you said.

I do agree that the Veteran with PTSD story has been done a lot, that is kind of why I'm trying to find a different angle to tell it, but also tell it in a way where it can be useful and somewhat informative.
I see what you meant when you said "In your particular case, this dude is just messed up and angry and we see him show it in a few different ways but then what? Nothing seems to happen...."     After reading that particular suggestion of yours, I went back and realized that there are areas in which I can not only improve the story but also the characters.  
After taking a break and reading it again from a different perspective, I realized there wasn't enough character development. There is no strong connection between James and Mac, as well as, there wasn't enough info about their past for the audience to truly care or develop a sense of emotion/connection to them.

While I meant for this script to be made into a short, it is starting to look like it might actually be used as one of my first features. So, I have decided to take the script back to the computer and try to improve it more based on your suggestions and the suggestions of others. Now, if i can get past the small writer's block I'm having, then I'll be good