2 Seconds Until There Will Never Be Another Halloween by The Man In The Shadows - Short, Family - When a bunch of Middle Schoolers enjoy a Halloween tradition they cause a curse to end Halloween forever. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

EXT. NIGHT I know what you are going for but this just looks odd.

Personally not a fan of script loads of camera moves in, unless they are really needed - which these don't seem to be, also a lot of CAPS of items which again is uncommon these days in scripts.

There may be a setting for CONT'D in your software as the it's throwing some odd fomatting into you VO

I'm thrown at what century this is set, you describe the man as dressed in mid 1800s, but then he goes round flipping light switches, seems jarring... maybe this will become apparent later... (i'm guessing it's just an affectation, yep it is)

I'm finding it quite difficult to follow in terms of the geography of what is happening, but some of the interplay between the kids is good.

Hmm, Diego's distraction seems redundant as quietly papering the cemetry would be easier, and logistically it's difficult to set of fireworks in a succession with him staying with them.

Okay, so you have a curse, and the best use of midnight so far... and in places it is funny , so marks for those aspects.

But I found the directing on the page distracting and the tone a little uneven, perhaps another draft could fix some of this.

Decent effort.

This is just soooo Goonies, you know?  Then again, Stinky reminds me of Corey Feldman in Stand By Me.  Even the dog won't kiss him.  Geez.  Poor kid.

Brutus Snivley reminds me of the old guy who lived three doors down from our house.  Rumor was, amongst the kids, was that he'd come out and shoot you with a shotgun if you went through his yard.  So...in typical kid fashion, we'd always go right across like a five foot section at an angle of his backyard on the way to the school playground, disappearing through the pine tree border, all the time watching his back porch VERY closely.  We were such scamps.  

Lots of things format wise that would be frowned upon by seasoned readers...

It's not your job as a writer to tell the director or DP what to do with the camera. It's your job as a writer to tell the best story you can that reads easy and is easy to understand. My suggestion, skip all camera directions.

I use bold slugs too. I love them. I find scenes easier to identify and follow when they are bolded. Having said that, that's the ONLY thing you should bold. Nothing else.

Moving on to capital letters. Words using all CAPS were common in the old days, but even then it was mostly used to emphasize sound. They are still used today by some writers, but only for important sounds and used sparingly. Most writers do not use them at all anymore. As writers, we should only focus on telling a good story. My advice would be to get rid of all your words using CAPS other than when a character is first introduced.

Your scene headings are confusing. EXT. NIGHT for example. You need to give us some sort of idea where we are. A city? A farm? A forest? Out on a lake? Even if all we see is the sky, EXT. NIGHT just makes the reader confused, and remember, you want it to be a smooth read for them since they are the first in line to check your script out. Then we have INT. MESSY STUDY - SAME. Where is this study? You can use that scene heading if it's a one location or so script,, but it doesn't tell us anything about the place. Next scene we're in a mansion. The correct heading should therefore be INT. MANSION - MESSY STUDY - NIGHT. That gives us a lot better idea of what I'm supposed to be picturing here.

To be honest with you, I have no idea what the story was really about. I got too hung up on the formatting errors. The good news is that screenplay formatting is the easiest thing about screenwriting to learn. It's the other stuff that's hard.

Hope this can be of help.  

Writer,

Looking past all the camera angles, the chunky action and the bolded dialogue (all of which are unnecessary and, not just frowned upon, but don't belong in a script at all!) is actually a cute little story. This was a family genre, so I tried to read it as such and tried to ignore all the aforementioned faults. However, what your story really needs is a bit of logic thrown in there. Things seemed to happen way too quickly and that made it hard to follow. My rec would be to read a few early draft pro scripts and not shooting drafts! Huge difference there.

Good job on entering, and good luck -- you're not too far away!

Steve

I found the formatting distracting as well, but I’m not sure I’d agree with the “no caps EVER” or “no bold EVER” points. It’s about using it cleanly on the page.

barring that, this was kind of adorable in a way, like Our Gang mixed with Scooby Doo. Enjoyed it.

Cute story!  I agree that I saw snippets of "Scooby Doo" here with maybe a little "Fat Albert" thrown in and I couldn't help but view "Stinky" as this story's version of Peanuts' "Pig Pen". LOL.  And the dog saving the day....and Halloween, made this dog lover's heart soar!  As mentioned in other threads, I'm not commenting on formatting or other technical issues - just pure story value.  Good job - it made me smile.  What more can you ask of a writer's effort?

I thought this was a really good idea. Conceptually the best I have read so far. Totally nailed the challenge too.

Just the formatting issues people have mentioned did make it harder for me to follow and when you introduced 7 characters in one go, I knew I was in trouble. My limited brain struggles to keep track of 3 let alone 7. Did we need them all?

Anyway, I loved the idea and you'll no doubt fix those formatting issues in your future writing.

Creative stuff, well done.

Well, I did laugh... I found it funny in more than a few places. What makes it funny are the characters. They're likable and humorous. This would look good as an animation.  I've seen your work before. You can write, no doubt about that. I just thought this was a bit overwritten. JMHO.  For what it is, I did enjoy it.

Al the best,

Ghost

I love these characters and their names too. Snively is a terrific villain, love him!  

The tale itself is jam-packed with action and great visuals.
I did get a little discombobulated at one point cause so much happens in these pages at times it required taking a breath.
.
For following the action a little essier I'd think about condensing a few of the paragraphs or at least splitting them in two but this is so colourful and frenetic..

You nailed the midnight deadline, and yay! someone made use of an actual curse.
The Family genre suits you well.

Very well done, Man in the Shadows!

I really liked how creative this one was. Clearly you put a lot of effort into hashing out a little universe and it shows with your camera directions that you had something created within your mind's eye. Your imagination must be immense.

Other people already commented on it but I think that a writer should develop is their sense of length. If you know you only have 10 pages, you should know that introducing so many characters in a short span of time would be tough.

I know I'm the 8th person to say this but don't put camera directions in your script. It just makes it a chore to read.

Overall, it was very creative and ambitious and I applaud you for going all out!