The Vultures of Death Valley by Mohammad A. Nawaz - Sci Fi, Fantasy, Crime - An unstable boxer, fuelled by revenge by the ones that left her for dead, saves the life of a psychic entangled in the dealings of psychopathic Mafiosi who will stop at nothing to murder him. 125 pages - pdf, format

Mo,

I'm going to split this review into two sections.

The first will deal with everything up until the end of chapter 1, the second will deal with the four chapters afterwards.

I will start with more of a running commentary of notes, then bring this full circle with some more general thoughts/ comments at the end.

But before I begin, I just wanted to say how much I loved the title of this. Great work.

Page 1 – "Ain’t too much about who you seen or who you haven’t, just that you’re brave enough to finally talk to someone." This didn’t really work for me, for a few reasons. Firstly, it reads quite awkwardly, and secondly, I’m not quite sure what she’s trying to say?

Page 3 – I’m actually digging the page breaks.

Page 4 – I have a few issues with the way the first scene here is written. First off, “His attention stays on Wolfie for a moment. The Man shakes his head, lumbers away towards the Woman.” This tripped me up, because you introduce these characters as silhouettes, but then we get information about where his attention is, i.e., what his eyes are focused on, which indicates greater detail than would be available from a mere silhouette? Second was this: “Wolfie groans in pain, pushes himself to the wall. Leans against it, still on his backside -- he won’t go out this easily. His eyes lead to a nearby stairwell, find a petrified CHILD watching him, hidden.” Now, there’s nothing wrong with this action per se, but the issue I had was that you haven’t used a slug to set up the scene, so I had no idea where this stairwell is, what kind of wall Wolfie’s pushing himself towards, why this kid would be hiding. Opting against using slugs is fine, but I just felt that we needed more information about the scene setting.

Also, not the biggest fan of Wolfie's early VO.

“Wolfie, mid 40s now, sits by his lonesome...” How old was Wolfie before?

“A pair of boxing gloves materialize. Hanging on a lone hook in some piece of shit dressing room, taking us to...” I feel this transition would work better if it lead straight to the ‘Forest’, versus stopping first at Wolfie’s VO.

Page 5 – “Bounce across the eyes of WOLFGANG “WOLFIE” WARWICK, toned skin clinging to his pale but defined body as...” Errr... Wolfie’s re-introed here?

Page 6 – OK, neat reveal. I was wondering where the female protag was going to fit into all of this.

“Overflowing file cabinets filled with coffee stained papers tower against the walls. Memories of fighters who never had a chance ingrained into their records. These were the ones that never made it -- a simple footnote amongst a million more.” I loved this. Who cares if it’s unfilmable, it really established the tone of the story.

Page 7 – Real minor point, but I’d remove the second “Sickly” here, to avoid repetition: “Wolfie reaches in nonchalantly, eyes still on Sickly as she pulls out half the cash, throws it back at Sickly.”

Page 8 – “-- fire and scraping metal inch towards the heavens. The whole world coming to a standstill. Wolfie being knocked into consciousness as everybody stops.” This took me three attempts to work out what was going on. Maybe look to simplify?

Page 9 – “A WOMAN materializes, almost demonic. Her silhouette laced with the fiery blaze as she stands atop of the car. A watchful eye -- but Wolfie knows she isn’t real.” Hmmm... Interested to see how this develops.

I really liked how this scene ended, with the mystery aspect. This script is already working a lot better than your previous entry. Really glad to see that you decided to develop this idea!

Page 10 – “a hollowness surrounded her that makes her image almost nightmarish.” Should be “surrounding/ surrounds”?

“WOLFIE -- watching her from the distance, confusion written across Wolfie’s face.” I’d probably get rid of the second “Wolfie”, just to avoid repetition.

With these flashbacks, is Wolfie’s appearance always masculine?

The reason I’m asking this, is sometimes you refer to the character as “he” (i.e., top of page 11), and sometimes as “she”.

My early guess is that the Private Investigator trying to find Wolfie’s child? No idea what timeframe this is occurring in, though? Maybe give us some kind of clue, i.e., Wolfie’s age.

Bottom of page 14 – “All the love I need is this sport.” Not the biggest fan of that line, I’m afraid.

Probably recommended if you refer to ‘H’ as either ‘Uncle H’ or just ‘H’ in both the dialogue and action, keep it consistent?

Top of page 17 – ... Not sure what’s going on here? Charred lockers? So the place has been burnt? How does this lead on from the backpack of money?

OK, so someone torches the locker room and leaves the bag with money? Interesting.

P. 18 – “I want you to find the nigger, Wolfie. I want you to find him and I want you to kill him.” Why? Because he thinks this dude torched the place?

P. 20 – “You get half the money. That ain’t one dollar bills in there, Wolfie. This is... Three. Million. Dollars.” Couldn’t fit in a backpack I actually did some research before writing Blood Harvest to see how much 3 million bucks would weigh, and what it would fit in. Minor point.

P. 23 – Wolfie was sent there to kill Apollo... So why’s she bothered about these other guys killing him?

Ah, the guy slipping and subsequently falling backwards out the hospital window! I don’t know, man. I feel like that belongs in some kind of slapstick, Adam Sandler movie, not this. Maybe Wolfie could tackle him out instead?

What does Wolfie take aim with? Her fists? She came to kill the guy without a weapon? So now she wants to hurt him again, after saving his life?

P. 29 – “The events are solidified, just not their specifics.” He seems to be changing his POV on fate here? Previously, he talked about individuals being in control of their own fate, but now he’s talking about events being already “solidified”, as if things are already predetermined?

Top of p. 36 – Errrr.... wtf?! Haha.

P. 38 – I like this scene a lot.

P. 47 – De Luca: “Giordano is a spec amongst the Rubble...” This sounded too similarly poetic to Apollo’s previous line (“... mere specs in a sea of stars”). Now, the poetic lines are fine by me (hell, I normally run wild with them), but I feel that they can get too much, very quickly. Maybe have it so they are only spoken by Apollo? This would also strengthen his mythical characterisation, IMO.

“Can you hear him, you hippie longhaired bruiser, we want the money.” Isn’t this too early for hippies?

“You’re the only fucker I have access to who knows where the nigger is.” Maybe have Apollo hiding out somewhere, rather than being held against his will in police custody? If De Luca is as big time as he says he is, I’m sure he would have had information about the man’s arrest?

P. 50 – “Wolfie’s stands near the window sill...” Get rid of the apostrophe.

Sometimes you refer to Wofie in the masculine, and sometimes in the feminine. Is this intentional?

P. 52 – “a revolver loads bullets in itself, Marshall’s Bay written across it.” I have no idea what that means…?

P. 53 – “Where’s the money, De Luca? I-I-I’m completely fucked here, you understand that? Fucked!” Whose money was it? How did it end up in the lockers? Why was half of the money left? How does De Luca think that Wolfie can lead her to the money? Through Apollo? But doesn’t Wolfie’s manager still have half of the money?

I’m pretty confused here… De Luca’s after Apollo, because he thinks he can lead him to the cash? But now he thinks one of these guys is hiding him? And why was the hit put out on Apollo if he holds this important information? What’s all of these guys’ involvement with the money? They’re talking about splitting it, but wouldn’t the guys with Apollo (as De Luca believes) be able to find the cash and keep it to themselves?

At the moment, this part needs more clarity. Who are these guys? How are they involved with the money?

P. 66 – “She holsters the gun. Kisses him on the forehead.” Hmmm, the kiss doesn’t seem like something Wolfie would do, IMO.

P. 71 – “I gave you everything...” I’m a bit at a loss at the meaning of this line, mainly stemming from some of the points earlier which went over my head a bit. What exactly did Apollo give Wolfie? He lead her to the German in the library whose brains she blew out... and then?

P. 72 – Not 100% sure about what the duo are talking about here? Or what this was meant to symbolise?

P. 73 – “This is the exact same scene from the teaser, and most importantly, this is not the reason for her revenge.” OK, I really liked this. I thought the teaser scene was the reason for Wolfie’s vengeance. Nice twist.

OK, so we get to chapter 2. And as before, I really like these chapter breaks. Before I start on chapter 2, I want to comment some more general thoughts on chapter 1. There was a lot in here to like. I really dug the sci-fi fantasy seeing-your-own-death aspect, but I felt this needed to be a bit clearer, mainly with regards to Wolfie's whole forseeing. What powers does she possess exactly? I also felt that some of the major plot points (I mentioned this briefly above) needed more clarity. How did this money end up in the gym? Whose money was this? What was Apollo's role in all of this? Why did the mob want him dead if he could lead them to it? Wolfie also needed a bit more defining, in relation to her goals. She goes to kill Apollo because her trainer's blackmailing her... But then she lets Apollo live, because he says he can lead her to her son? But then she leaves him in the prison? I wasn't the biggest fan of the 'Tall Man' scenes; they weren't mysterious enough to pull me in, nor did they reveal anything new about the characters or the story. I'm guessing this will play a part later though?

And here's part 2 of the review:

P. 77 – Again with the VO’s ... Not the biggest fan. It was quite clunky and just a bit too expositional for my liking.

There’s a formatting error at the bottom of the page as well, with the dialogue appearing on the page after the character name.

P. 78 – “Wolfie’s fingers feeling the fabric. Lost in thought. An ambience surrounding the moment until...” Wolfie?

P. 80 – Wtf, the raven’s talking?!

Give us a better description of this creature, because it’s hard to visualise as it is.

What is with this raven talking?!

Aside from the talking raven, I really liked this chapter.


Chapter 3. Here we go.

OK, first off, chapter 3 starts at the bottom of the title page?

This voiceover works a lot better for me. Less philosophizing. More story telling.

... Although, there is one “and grew” too many for me here...

Holy crap, that was a short chapter. Not sure about this one. There didn’t really seem to be much of a story here. Compared to the previous chapter, at least. The mystery of the shooting at the end works, but the chapter was so short, that this didn’t have as great an impact as I had expected. The weakest of the chapters so far. Still, I’m sure that this will tie in later, though.


Here goes chapter 4.

Same thing with the formatting error at the bottom of the page.

P. 91 – This line confused me: “Her voice is soft. Modest.” As it came straight after Louis said his first line, so I immediately thought you were talking about him, which confused me, as this line talks about a girl... Took me out of the read whilst I then worked out what you meant. Also, no age for Louis?

Is that really something someone would say to a baby?

P. 98 – “I get these dreams sometimes, they scare me -- can’t imagine what she thinks either.” Where did this come from? Didn’t really seem to follow from the previous line.

This scene... Really not sure the point of it? I feel as if it could go, and we’d lose nothing.

OK, there is a point. Still, the scene felt too light for my liking...

P. 101 – “Marbled floors. Being drenched in the blood of Sienna as she holds her nose tight.” Not sure what the second sentence means?

Would Sienna not have checked on Sofia?

Why does Leo think that Sienna would know where Costa is?

P. 104 – “He finds she’s speaking to her killer.” Who finds who is?

O. 105 – Why would Leo entrust killing this guy to a woman who – I imagine – has never shot a gun in her life? Also, why does he want Nicky dead, if he doesn’t care about the girl?

P. 110 – OK, you weren’t kidding when you said that there’s some dark shit in this, haha.

Not sure of Sienna’s motives here. Will come back to this, later.

Should this mini slug be 1965?

P. 113 – “I was uh... Set to be a champion. I was set to pull this sport down to its knees wantin’ more. My name... They were gonna remember me.” ???

OK, so is Blood Wolfie’s son?

Yep, looks like he is.

P. 119 – “A red to his mouth.”???

P. 120 – I’m still no wiser as to what role Nicky places in all of this...

P. 121 – The formatting is all off for this title page???

These last two pages have some problems, for me. Firstly, how would we know that this man is Solomon, if it appeared on film? To the viewer, this would just be a random guy, who we've never met before and, thus, have no feelings towards either way?... Much like the scene of his daughter... We've never met her before. Why should she get the honour of closing the script? These are your closing scenes. Hit us with something emotive; end with one of the characters we've been following for the past 120+ pages. Also, I'm not really sure of the meaning of the final scene with the jokers? What's the symbolism here?

Stand out chapter in this section was definitely chapter 2. Chapter 3, I've already spoken about above, whilst I had some problems with chapter 4. Now, firstly, I loved how this did bring together some of the previous strands. I thought you did this really well. What I didn't like so much? Sienna's character. This is a pretty massive arc, with her turning into a real villain, man. But I didn't think this was set-up nearly strongly enough. Give us more insight into what makes her snap. Because right now, it was more of a confusing "wft?!" moment instead of a "dude, that was fucking crazy" wtf moment.

Overall comments and thoughts to follow shortly... Probably won't be too much to say, as most of my comments I've already touched upon in one of the above two posts. But there's still a few things

OK man, so I'll post up a few paragraphs to sum up my main thoughts on this, hopefully offer a few suggestions on how to take this forward.

First off, I loved some of the themes that you tackled with this. The whole idea of fate and destinies being passed down from generation to generation, this endless cycle of death and violence. It's similar to something that I'm tackling in another story of mine, so it really struck a chord. And this leads me to the first real criticism I had...: Sienna. I mean, how does she fit into this theme? Wolfie and Blood's stories are dominated by the impact that their father's/parents' choices had on them. Wolfie's hell-bent on killing her parents, whilst Blood's bitter as a result of being blacklisted due to Wolfie's actions. But Sienna...? I'm really not too sure what she was about. I really struggled with her character as a whole (namely due to some of the points I mentioned above). Also, I cannot for the life of me work out how Nicky Costa fitted into all of this. If you want to keep Sienna and Nicky in this, fine; Just clarify their roles, and see if you can find a way for these to fit into the overstall thematic story. Because I thought that Blood was a really interesting character, but we only see him at the end of his career. I would have loved to have seen him struggling with failing at achieving his dream, seeing consequences of Wolfie's choices in action.

Another big issue I had was with chapter 1 as a whole, namely the lack of clarity that I mentioned above. Some of these questions are (sort of) answered in the final chapter, with Nick Costa, but still, as I had no idea who he was, I was still left scratching my head with this. Also, who was Apollo??? Wolfie's motivation also needed a bit of work, IMO. The characters want to be boxing gods, they want to create a legacy. That's why Wolfie originally agrees to kill Apollo... But then she suddenly turns into the angel of vengeance? How is this related to her earlier goal of becoming a boxing god? Is there any way to tie the two together?

That being said, there's definitely something here. And, for what -- four weeks??? -- of work? Damn impressive. You tackled a really ambitious story here. With a few more rewrites, this could be an awesome story.

Edit:

Just had another thought, which I didn't comment on earlier... What was with this whole 'creature' subplot as well? This mainly crept up in chapter 2 (Blood's story), but was also present in some of the others. In its current form, it felt kind of shoehorned in, simply because it wasn't explored in nearly enough detail for me.

I actually really liked it, though. Thinking back on this, chapter 2 probably was my favourite of the five. And that was due to this dark, foreboding atmosphere that you created. I kept waiting for the creature to pop up again later, or to be explained, but it wasn't.

Yo, Tobes! Firstly, thanks for the read, man, always appreciated. I see this one wasn't to your liking, but then again, nobody's looking to impress on the first draft.

Let's run by some comments. I'll italicize yours as the quoting just gets messy.

Firstly, it reads quite awkwardly, and secondly, I’m not quite sure what she’s trying to say?
I think that leads into the whole slang talk, if you change the grammar then it reads nicer. "I haven't seen you before" "[It] doesn't matter about who you've seen and who you haven't, only [thing that matters is] that you're brave enough to finally talk to someone." I'll look into it.

Page 3 – I’m actually digging the page breaks.
Thanks, brother, they messed up my Final Draft permanently though it seems. I'm not even kidding, something to do with multiple action blocks and slug changes destroyed the margins of all my other work, final draft hates 2 page action lines filled with shift+enter. I'm honestly not sure what happened.

Also, not the biggest fan of Wolfie's early VO.
Yeah... Neither am I, but I decided to change it from what I had earlier since I felt my original sounded too redneckish.

Errr... Wolfie’s re-introed here?
Yeah... Hahaha, I added the scene at the start after I'd finished the chapter. Wolfie was still a man at that point, so I had to focus on where I put description and where I didn't on what she looked like.

With these flashbacks, is Wolfie’s appearance always masculine?
My bad, I was at around page 16 before I changed the gender, thus, there were a lot of he and she that just slipped past me. Especially in scenes with other females. On the topic of her appearance, I always imagined Wolfie as androgynous -- but more masculine looking, even though she’s biologically female.

My early guess is that the Private Investigator trying to find Wolfie’s child?
Okay... So I was wondering where your later comments emerge where you think the Wolfie is searching for a Child. And I just figured out that it was the dream just prior. Now, that's something which I totally didn't mean for. I'll explain this in the later comments and hopefully we can find a fix. The moment before this wasn't a flashback, it was a vision -- but I really don't want to say it by writing 'dream sequence'. Because it's not a dream, it's the future, simply disguised in the form of this cottonwood forest. She sees the death of the child, and that Wolfie needs to save her – which she obviously doesn’t by killing De Luca, which in turn has Sienna ahem, kill the child.

Bottom of page 14 – “All the love I need is this sport.” Not the biggest fan of that line, I’m afraid.
I originally cut that scene out, but re-added it since I wanted the audience to know that Wolfie claims she can see the death of this random girl, whether that's real or fake.

Why? Because he thinks this dude torched the place?
I think everything here was lost in H's dialogue. "they were chasin’ had a pirate map with a fuckin’ ‘X’ on this gym" -- this was meant to suggest that Apollo has a map that reveals that the money is at this gym. H wanted Wolfie to kill Apollo and destroy the map. I'll make it clearer.

Couldn’t fit in a backpack  I actually did some research before writing Blood Harvest to see how much 3 million bucks would weigh, and what it would fit in. Minor point.
I actually too did some research and decided to change it to a large duffel. I think I forgot to implement that into the story until we see that small scene of Nicky Costa transferring the money across. Actually, no, I remember why -- prior to 1964 I think it was, the US had notes of 500, 1000, 5000, and 10000 dollars.

Top of p. 36 – Errrr.... wtf?! Haha.
Huh? Apollo's death? I don't understand, mate.

P. 38 – I like this scene a lot.
Ha! Really? I hated this scene, I felt like it was probably one of the weakest in the whole script. Glad to see it's not too bad though.

Isn’t this too early for hippies?
Yes, definitely, nice catch. It was originally something to do with Wolfie's gender, but I thought that if people were questioning her gender, she'd probably have been caught on to long ago. So I replaced it with that quickly.

Sometimes you refer to Wofie in the masculine, and sometimes in the feminine. Is this intentional?
On that page? I can't find it, do you mean the characters referring to her as a he? That's on purpose.

Whose money was it? How did it end up in the lockers? Why was half of the money left? How does De Luca think that Wolfie can lead her to the money? Through Apollo? But doesn’t Wolfie’s manager still have half of the money?
That's a lot of questions, most which are answered by Nicky Costa. The money -- I felt as if a part of the Macguffin is that it doesn't matter where it's from, and regardless of whether I wanted the story to exist in that shape, I want to stick to that. I don't think it entirely does matter where the money came from, it was simply hidden in a hole in the gym behind the lockers. H says this earlier in the script, I think I may need to tinker with that scene as a shit load of important info is placed through it.

De Luca isn't certain that Wolfie knows where the money is, but he's certain that she knows where Apollo is. She doesn't want to give this up without exchanging Luther Walter's location -- and they can't give up Walter since Bianchi's got a hardon for Wolfie and he's certain that De Luca has her (provided by either the police or Apollo, whichever one works). It sounded a little less convoluted in my head, but De Luca simply thinks that Apollo still has the 'pirate map', whilst Bianchi knows that Wolfie will relay the information from Apollo. That pirate map is very important to note, Apollo even says that the map doesn't exist, it was a memory that was passed on (to Nicky Costa as he saves him), it's just that's what they want to cling onto it because some snivelling bastard (Nicky Costa) told them that Apollo has the map. De Luca ordered the hit, since he doesn't give a shit about Apollo, all he wants is the map. Now, this is idiotic, but then again, De Luca got his mistress pregnant and beats her regularly. Bianchi's man, Samuel says he found no map on Apollo -- thus, Bianchi obviously assumed either Wolfie or Apollo himself had it. They torture Apollo, Apollo gives nothing because he honestly has nothing (under the guise he won't talk) -- hence why Bianchi needs Wolfie. All these mobsters are families under a cartel based almost all in California. Leo plays his own part on the opposite end of the coast working with these guys. I'm actually laughing right now at how complicated I've made it be, but the explanation is just long as I tried to dumb down all the exposition in the script to a minimal amount.

Not 100% sure about what the duo are talking about here? Or what this was meant to symbolise?
It was more that -- Apollo asks Wolfie, having seen her in his dreams, whether she's ever forgotten a face. This was to basically to question  whether Wolfie was actually a complete psycho and killed for the sake of killing. As in, was he as unimportant as the however many others (dead people) on her list. Is he a cog in the machine or did she truly care for him and it was never her intention to kill him. But, as we unfortunately see, Wolfie would in fact have killed Apollo eventually.

What powers does she possess exactly?
See, this is incredibly hard to show, and if you have any suggestions, throw them at me. It's easy for her to conjure up a scene of somebody dying, and then we see that scene occurring in real life -- but I feel it just reads a bit juvenile and uninspiring. Wolfie can only see people's deaths, Apollo can see the nearby future and small fragments of the faraway future but not much else. Sienna finds guidance from her visions but she can't "see-see" the future. Nicky Costa has the ability to write the thoughts of others from the future.

But then she lets Apollo live, because he says he can lead her to her son?
It must've been that scene with the blasted girl ! With a story like this, with pretty much every character being incredibly active, throws the whole story thread into chaos because every single person wants something. This makes everybody’s motives more confusing than they should be. Wolfie wants to find the folks that left her for head, her son's still in LA, but she knows he despises her and he simply doesn't want to stay in contact. But she also knows he’s fine.

But then she leaves him in the prison?
It was more that she had to, Apollo even claims that it was impossible for them to both escape. With that reasoning too, Apollo didn't just call the guards over and dob her in, he let her escape to find De Luca. Wolfie feels as if she owes him.

P. 80 – Wtf, the raven’s talking?! What is with this raven talking?!
Haha! YEAH, DUDE! It’s possible! You should've seen my face too when I heard they could. I hear Ravens are very smart creatures. Throw a search on Youtube of a 'talking raven', you'll get a few results. Most of it is mimicking, but I don't doubt a smart few could construct their own little thoughts like parrots do.

OK, first off, chapter 3 starts at the bottom of the title page?
Oh, mannn. Great pick up, I must've screwed up the margins I think I deleted a paragraph somewhere in the previous chapter and it screwed everything up. I'm 100% certain though that I did check it before I submitted it... Must've slipped past me, oh well. I'll fix it in the morning hopefully.

Also, no age for Louis?
This was a prequel to my other 7WC entry from last year, if you lined the timeline up, Sienna comes out as a year or two, maybe a little more, older than 20 in this story, but, to have Louis be working with Leo for a decade or two, he would be considerably older than Sienna, and it would give readers the wrong image about the relationship. Rather than add exposition to cover this fact up, the reader would simply fare better not knowing the age.

Where did this come from? Didn’t really seem to follow from the previous line.
, yeah, you got me, I cut out a large portion of dialogue where I wanted Sienna to talk about her dreams. But then thought I could sneak this by.

Firstly, how would we know that this man is Solomon, if it appeared on film?
This is the whole prequel stuff poking through. Is this really that problematic? I never thought of it that way, but I think it shouldn't be too hard to fix.

Hit us with something emotive; end with one of the characters we've been following for the past 120+ pages
See, that's where I felt my intentions became blurry. The whole script deals with Wolfie doing anything and everything to kill the ones that left her for dead, aka, her parents. But in the needless bloodshed towards it, the key word being needless, she in turn destroys everything she tried to fix via her actions. A huge one being that she murders Jimmy De Luca, whose daughter, Sofia, then goes into the care of Jimmy’s brother -- with Sienna becoming her nanny solely based on this alone, lending her on a journey from her precognition that takes her to California to find Blood in desperate need of some guidance, and him being swayed by her gargantuan height in the hope of having a son that will carry on the Warwick legacy. Which, he of course does, but at the price of his own life -- he dies at some piece of shit gym by burning to death. And then his daughter, who I too funnily enough wrote another standalone 120 page script about -- ends up in the same boat as Wolfie. Aka, being shot down with nothing achieved. I'm not sure, I felt this doesn't need to be spelled out explicitly, but I think the audience should definitely understand the moral implications behind Wolfie's mayhem and uncaring decisions. What goes around, comes around, so to say.

Sienna's character. This is a pretty massive arc, with her turning into a real villain, man. But I didn't think this was set-up nearly strongly enough. Give us more insight into what makes her snap.
See, again, I knew I'd be getting this comment -- and it's a shame I did. I really really wanted to outline the fact that some people are just born bad. I even have my good friend Nicky Costa say this "The hard truth is some people are just born bad" -- this in turn goes to Wolfie's story. Is Wolfie also a bad person? Does the fact we actually see Wolfie's decisions some make her actions justified? But isn’t Wolfie as insane as Sienna? "Is the jab I throw two minutes and five seconds into the third round calculated and reasoned, or is it that I simply hope it will connect?" I think I'll let other folks also dwell on this aspect, I'm really intrigued if people get behind Nicky Costa's reasoning, and whether they agree or disagree -- which is fine, I just want folks to understand that's the basis of her character, she's evil because some people are simply born that way. A copout, I know, but that was my intention.

I think it becomes terribly obvious here that I wanted the story to be longer. A lot longer actually. I'd say I cut around 80 pages from the outline to fit everything inside. Sienna's character was meant to go to California to find Sofia's killer and, with a first hand account, guide herself through every single repercussion that came into the story because of Wolfie’s actions. She was meant to be in the heat of it to show how much suffering Wolfie has conjured. Obviously, we saw none of this because I couldn't fit it in.

Nicky Costa on the other hand was meant to be the glue that holds the story together. He had, arguably, a stronger power than Apollo. All he had to do was sort through the muck, which he did. His story was meant to deal with him sliding the building blocks into place, and what he did with the actual money -- which is kickstarting his promoting career, that directly eventually clashes with him promoting Solomon. He was a major player in Solomon's script, which turned out to be a behemoth 152 pages. I want to say his story was the most interesting as his character was the only sane out of all of them, but I had to keep him in the script since he's the reason why everything went the way it did.

Now, none of this matters at all to the reader, who could barely give two shits about who Nicky or Sienna were meant to do. Do you think I should scrap them both? Then again, I'm not sure how I'd handle the exposition burst at the end, as Nicky was the cause of all. I might see what other readers think, and if they agree, I wouldn't mind cutting Nicky and Sienna out if they don't belong.

Also, who was Apollo?
Apollo was simply Apollo, do you think this needs to be answered? He’s the second macguffin to this story to be honest. I don't think it's too complicated to think of him as the fellow that can see the future. He just is that way, by loading him with backstory, it doesn't really change the audience's expectations of him I feel.

How is this related to her earlier goal of becoming a boxing god?
Hmm, this is interesting, because I don't think Wolfie cared all that much about this -- she just cared that she didn't want her reputation of twenty five years ruined. I try and explain this a few times, she had a fuck tonne of fights, over 200, this is just an incredibly long career as anybody who follows boxing knows, she lost a lot of those fights too, so it can be assumed she doesn't care about boxing legacy as such. I can't explain it, if you look at her dialogue with Apollo at the hospital and H at the gym, I feel as if it leans more towards her claiming that she's sacrificed everything for this sport, and it would destroy her if her reputation was tarnished. I don't think it's possible for her TO become a great boxer when her history is behind her. She's aging, not too old, but a solid amount older than Mayweather who's this time actually retiring at 38. She does want Blood to become the best in the sport though, but knows she's way past any redemption herself. Her goal is simple, she wants to murder her parents. She never agrees to kill Apollo. She even tells H to go fuck himself or something or other.

What was with this whole 'creature' subplot as well?
It was basically a metaphor for Sienna being the 'monster'. In my 7WC last year, for which the 10 pages are still up I think, it was featured strongly in that, it was just a nod to my other script, but again, Sienna being a monster and all. I was going to have Wolfie see these visions of a human-like structure building itself, skin, bones, nerve endings etc, throughout her story as hallucinations -- almost like something's crafting itself as we progress until it becomes a full fledge monster in Blood’s story, aka, Wolfie becoming lost in her mind but the page count wasn't working with me so I cut it.

Anyway, thanks again, brother. Apologies for all the questions. I'd like to get to the bottom of how to make this better, maybe other folks could also build on this. I'll get to the other entries tomorrow or the day after, depending on how time fares.

Cheers!

Yo, Mo!

See my bolded comments below

Quoted from nawazm11 Yo, Tobes! Firstly, thanks for the read, man, always appreciated. I see this one wasn't to your liking, but then again, nobody's looking to impress on the first draft. Quite the contrary! Of the last three features of yours that I have read, this one was my favourite. My early guess is that the Private Investigator trying to find Wolfie’s child? Okay... So I was wondering where your later comments emerge where you think the Wolfie is searching for a Child. And I just figured out that it was the dream just prior. Now, that's something which I totally didn't mean for. I'll explain this in the later comments and hopefully we can find a fix. The moment before this wasn't a flashback, it was a vision -- but I really don't want to say it by writing 'dream sequence'. Because it's not a dream, it's the future, simply disguised in the form of this cottonwood forest. She sees the death of the child, and that Wolfie needs to save her – which she obviously doesn’t by killing De Luca, which in turn has Sienna ahem, kill the child. So this inspector scene was a dream? Is it necessary to include? It confused the hell out of me Why? Because he thinks this dude torched the place? I think everything here was lost in H's dialogue. "they were chasin’ had a pirate map with a fuckin’ ‘X’ on this gym" -- this was meant to suggest that Apollo has a map that reveals that the money is at this gym. H wanted Wolfie to kill Apollo and destroy the map. I'll make it clearer. Ah, that makes a lot more sense. Yeah, definitely look to clarify this Top of p. 36 – Errrr.... wtf?! Haha. Huh? Apollo's death? I don't understand, mate. That was just me being super shocked/surprised at his first death! I didn't mean it in a bad way Sometimes you refer to Wofie in the masculine, and sometimes in the feminine. Is this intentional? On that page? I can't find it, do you mean the characters referring to her as a he? That's on purpose. Sorry mate, shouldn't have put a page number here, as this was just more of a general observation. Whose money was it? How did it end up in the lockers? Why was half of the money left? How does De Luca think that Wolfie can lead her to the money? Through Apollo? But doesn’t Wolfie’s manager still have half of the money? That's a lot of questions, most which are answered by Nicky Costa. The money -- I felt as if a part of the Macguffin is that it doesn't matter where it's from, and regardless of whether I wanted the story to exist in that shape, I want to stick to that. I don't think it entirely does matter where the money came from, it was simply hidden in a hole in the gym behind the lockers. H says this earlier in the script, I think I may need to tinker with that scene as a shit load of important info is placed through it. This makes sense.... And I agree that it doesn't matter where the money came from, but we need to know this, i.e., we need to know that H found it randomly in a hole behind the lockers. I'd really focus on bringing as much clarity as you can to this scene because, as you correctly identified, there is a lot of info here. De Luca isn't certain that Wolfie knows where the money is, but he's certain that she knows where Apollo is. She doesn't want to give this up without exchanging Luther Walter's location -- and they can't give up Walter since Bianchi's got a hardon for Wolfie and he's certain that De Luca has her (provided by either the police or Apollo, whichever one works). It sounded a little less convoluted in my head, but De Luca simply thinks that Apollo still has the 'pirate map', whilst Bianchi knows that Wolfie will relay the information from Apollo. That pirate map is very important to note, Apollo even says that the map doesn't exist, it was a memory that was passed on (to Nicky Costa as he saves him), it's just that's what they want to cling onto it because some snivelling bastard (Nicky Costa) told them that Apollo has the map. De Luca ordered the hit, since he doesn't give a shit about Apollo, all he wants is the map. Now, this is idiotic, but then again, De Luca got his mistress pregnant and beats her regularly. Bianchi's man, Samuel says he found no map on Apollo -- thus, Bianchi obviously assumed either Wolfie or Apollo himself had it. They torture Apollo, Apollo gives nothing because he honestly has nothing (under the guise he won't talk) -- hence why Bianchi needs Wolfie. All these mobsters are families under a cartel based almost all in California. Leo plays his own part on the opposite end of the coast working with these guys. I'm actually laughing right now at how complicated I've made it be, but the explanation is just long as I tried to dumb down all the exposition in the script to a minimal amount. Dude, I'm even getting a little confused just reading this... haha. Is there no way you can possibly simplify this? Does it need to be this complicated? I know this is a classic example of "the pot calling the kettle black", as my scripts normally confuse the hell out of people as well, haha. But I would still look to try and strip this back in future drafts. Not 100% sure about what the duo are talking about here? Or what this was meant to symbolise? It was more that -- Apollo asks Wolfie, having seen her in his dreams, whether she's ever forgotten a face. This was to basically to question  whether Wolfie was actually a complete psycho and killed for the sake of killing. As in, was he as unimportant as the however many others (dead people) on her list. Is he a cog in the machine or did she truly care for him and it was never her intention to kill him. But, as we unfortunately see, Wolfie would in fact have killed Apollo eventually. OK, that makes sense... but unfortunately, this was lost in the line mate What powers does she possess exactly? See, this is incredibly hard to show, and if you have any suggestions, throw them at me. It's easy for her to conjure up a scene of somebody dying, and then we see that scene occurring in real life -- but I feel it just reads a bit juvenile and uninspiring. Wolfie can only see people's deaths, Apollo can see the nearby future and small fragments of the faraway future but not much else. Sienna finds guidance from her visions but she can't "see-see" the future. Nicky Costa has the ability to write the thoughts of others from the future. Ahhhh, OK. I got Apollo's skill, sort of got Sienna's, but Wolfie's (to a certain extent -- the demon with the wings confused me quite a bit when she first met Apollo) and certainly Nicky Costa's were lost on me. I wasn't too sure at all what was going on with the whole Nicky Costa business. Before I try and throw a few ideas out about how to rectify these issues, let me first ask you: Is it necessary for all four characters to possess similar skills? One character possessing this is a unique character trait, two's still neat, but once we get to three and four characters, it all becomes a little too murky IMO. I'm not sure about how you would further clarify Nicky's skill, but with Wolfie, maybe just show more of it. Maybe whenever she meets someone for the first time, we see a brief flash of them dying. I don't know, just an idea. That might be overkill, but I'd rather have clarity by overkill, than confusion by underkill (is that even a word??!!).

I've gotta' get back to this report at work now, so I'll reply to part two of your post later, mate

I like your style of writing even if it doesn't "follow the rules." The story flowed, I got the images, however it became too much for me. Felt like I was in a dream all the time and couldn't get out. Too poetic? I don't know. Maybe I need more sleep and I can come back to it.

The vultures of Death Valley

Title - quite like this. Not sure what it says to me, but it's provocative

Before I go on to my running comments....

Mo, may be its me, and my short attention span, but I find this style to be frustrating. This is partially because I think it is close to stunning. There is something fluid and dynamic about it. It could really fly.

But, like salt on food, it doesnt take much to really change the flavour, and become off putting., well to me This is your style, although recent shorts didn't seem to be as dense.

Here, I struggle with the read as I feel I'm almost translating as I go along, when I shouldn't.

As a whole, for me what I would benefit from is...

# A little more clarity on the scene, where we are, what's it's like. perhaps a little more reason and connection between them. Sometime they jump and I can't see why.

# clarity of what people are after. The plot in effect.

I am pretty certain I am not one of the best readers around, so take by comments as they should be, but I thought I would pass the above overview on, as I really feel you have a voice.

P1 do you need emerge?
P1 OC isn't that off camera, a TV term, rather than OS?
Chapter one...not seen that in a script before. Would it go on screen?

So we start with the mysterious young girl seeing images, visions and a sense in when we all die. Probably been done a good few times before, as has all our stuff, so without reading further your challenge will be to make this stand out. Atmospheric though.

P4 blood - I don't mind this slug, but a little detail of where we are may help
P5 quite a bit of VO
P6 woman...boxer...well I'll give you that, it's different. But don't boxers fight bare topped so the scars would be clear?
P8 baboon, or youths
P9 how does she knows she's not real?
P10 her voice...etc not sure I got this
P13 this has gone all surreal and sometimes I find it hard to follow
P23 flying teeth, almost a comedy sketch
P24 your fate is murk - I'm a bit lost with the scene
P26 spoken to the tall man. I like a bit of mystery but so far this has drifted into the I don't know what's it's about zone
P27 they left me...
P29 it's the Germans...
P35 you are the blood of flocking birds..don't say that quickly, joke aside, I'm lost
P37 I feel like I'm losing my mind ... I concur

P42 who is de Luca.. The name waste too end but without more I m not engaged

You know it's worth noting at this stage.... I have no idea what wolfie is after. All that story and I'm clueless. It's been a barrage of detail and suggestions all thrown into a salad mixer.

I'll come back to this.

Yo, Mo.  What up, bro?

I really want to give this a chance, but I'm not going to be able to, based on the style you've chosen to write this in.  I have to agree 100% with Reef in his early remarks - this is a tough slug to get through and it's almost as if you're purposely making it so.

Many of your Slugs just don't make any sense...and I think you're aware of that, but I'm not sure why you're doing it.

Not naming so many early characters is also a problem for me.  It's just tough as a reader to get much "character" out of unnamed characters.  They feel like cardboard cutouts just standing in, and that kills the read for me right there.

We all obviously have many choices in how we write and you're made your decision to go this style.  It's ballsy for sure, and at times, very striking, but for a screenplay, it lacks what I feel a screenplay really is.

I'm sure there are many who will love this style and look.  Hell, I can see real Producers giving this a look and being very impressed.  But, when you get right down to it, everything is skewed because of it...the page count, the action, even the descriptions.  Nothing will play out as it reads, and because of that, it's a mistake, IMO.

But, you got style, bro...that you do.

Best of luck with this.

Hey Mo,

As promised, here's part two of my reply! Apologies for the delay in getting back to you on this, I got caught up in reading Reef's and now Dustin's entries

As before, I've bolded my comments in your quote below.

Quoted from nawazm11 But then she lets Apollo live, because he says he can lead her to her son? It must've been that scene with the blasted girl ! With a story like this, with pretty much every character being incredibly active, throws the whole story thread into chaos because every single person wants something. This makes everybody’s motives more confusing than they should be. Wolfie wants to find the folks that left her for head, her son's still in LA, but she knows he despises her and he simply doesn't want to stay in contact. But she also knows he’s fine. Yeah man, I definitely agree about the chaos part... Character goals and motives are one thing which I (at least) feel need to be crystal clear, as there's nothing worse than a confusing character. Is there any way that you could bring Wolfie's main goal to the absolute forefront, whilst maybe cutting some of her backstory, so we don't get caught up in what's not the focus of her story? P. 80 – Wtf, the raven’s talking?! What is with this raven talking?! Haha! YEAH, DUDE! It’s possible! You should've seen my face too when I heard they could. I hear Ravens are very smart creatures. Throw a search on Youtube of a 'talking raven', you'll get a few results. Most of it is mimicking, but I don't doubt a smart few could construct their own little thoughts like parrots do. That's crazy! Haha. At first, I thought this was just some weird trippy scene lol. Makes a lot more sense now. Firstly, how would we know that this man is Solomon, if it appeared on film? This is the whole prequel stuff poking through. Is this really that problematic? I never thought of it that way, but I think it shouldn't be too hard to fix. On page, no... but on screen, it might be? Not a major point though, either way. Hit us with something emotive; end with one of the characters we've been following for the past 120+ pages See, that's where I felt my intentions became blurry. The whole script deals with Wolfie doing anything and everything to kill the ones that left her for dead, aka, her parents. But in the needless bloodshed towards it, the key word being needless, she in turn destroys everything she tried to fix via her actions. A huge one being that she murders Jimmy De Luca, whose daughter, Sofia, then goes into the care of Jimmy’s brother -- with Sienna becoming her nanny solely based on this alone, lending her on a journey from her precognition that takes her to California to find Blood in desperate need of some guidance, and him being swayed by her gargantuan height in the hope of having a son that will carry on the Warwick legacy. Which, he of course does, but at the price of his own life -- he dies at some piece of shit gym by burning to death. And then his daughter, who I too funnily enough wrote another standalone 120 page script about -- ends up in the same boat as Wolfie. Aka, being shot down with nothing achieved. I'm not sure, I felt this doesn't need to be spelled out explicitly, but I think the audience should definitely understand the moral implications behind Wolfie's mayhem and uncaring decisions. What goes around, comes around, so to say. Dude, this is fucking awesome. Seriously. But some of this message definitely got lost in the script. Especially the Sienne-Blood part, and Blood's story with his son. I could definitelly tell that it was a huuuuuuuge story that had been cut dramatically to reach the 125 page count. Have you seen The Place Beyond The Pines? Similarly themes and structure (though linear) dealt with there. I would seriously recommend trimming chapter 1, then boosting the rest of the script up. IMO, this script shouldn't be less than about 140 pages. It's a multi protag, multi generation story. 120 pages isn't right for every script. A script shoul to be a long as needed to tell the story. This is one which would definitely benefit from a beefier word count. Cut out Nicky Costa... I found this more confusing, versus adding anything to the plot. Then simplify Wolfie's story. Cut this down to nearer 50 pages if you can. Why? Two reasons. Firstly, the longer we stay with one central character, the more jarring a protag shift will be, and; secondly, we need more time spent with the subsequent consequences (especially Blood's storyline, which I felt severly underdeveloped) of Wolfie's earlier violent actions, for this message to really hit home. Sienna's character. This is a pretty massive arc, with her turning into a real villain, man. But I didn't think this was set-up nearly strongly enough. Give us more insight into what makes her snap. See, again, I knew I'd be getting this comment -- and it's a shame I did. I really really wanted to outline the fact that some people are just born bad. I even have my good friend Nicky Costa say this "The hard truth is some people are just born bad" -- this in turn goes to Wolfie's story. Is Wolfie also a bad person? Does the fact we actually see Wolfie's decisions some make her actions justified? But isn’t Wolfie as insane as Sienna? "Is the jab I throw two minutes and five seconds into the third round calculated and reasoned, or is it that I simply hope it will connect?" I think I'll let other folks also dwell on this aspect, I'm really intrigued if people get behind Nicky Costa's reasoning, and whether they agree or disagree -- which is fine, I just want folks to understand that's the basis of her character, she's evil because some people are simply born that way. A copout, I know, but that was my intention. Not a cop-out, in the slightest. I did pick up on that dialogue. My issue wasn't with the actions, but rather you'd spent the past 20ish pages setting Sienna up as this nice character, that her actions just came so out of left-field, with no apparent trigger. I feel she needs a reason for this dark side to come to the fore front. I think it becomes terribly obvious here that I wanted the story to be longer. A lot longer actually. I'd say I cut around 80 pages from the outline to fit everything inside. Sienna's character was meant to go to California to find Sofia's killer and, with a first hand account, guide herself through every single repercussion that came into the story because of Wolfie’s actions. She was meant to be in the heat of it to show how much suffering Wolfie has conjured. Obviously, we saw none of this because I couldn't fit it in. This! Fuck it, man. Beef the page count up... Or, cut out some of the earlier parts I mentioned that I didn't feel integral to the central (AWESOME!!!!) story you have here, then beef these central parts? Nicky Costa on the other hand was meant to be the glue that holds the story together. He had, arguably, a stronger power than Apollo. All he had to do was sort through the muck, which he did. His story was meant to deal with him sliding the building blocks into place, and what he did with the actual money -- which is kickstarting his promoting career, that directly eventually clashes with him promoting Solomon. He was a major player in Solomon's script, which turned out to be a behemoth 152 pages. I want to say his story was the most interesting as his character was the only sane out of all of them, but I had to keep him in the script since he's the reason why everything went the way it did. Ah, man... I'm really not sure about the Nicky character. The present day story line with him left me cold. Then his involvement in the earlier stories left me confused. Is there no way you could find a way for everything to happen, without him being present? Now, none of this matters at all to the reader, who could barely give two shits about who Nicky or Sienna were meant to do. Do you think I should scrap them both? Then again, I'm not sure how I'd handle the exposition burst at the end, as Nicky was the cause of all. I might see what other readers think, and if they agree, I wouldn't mind cutting Nicky and Sienna out if they don't belong. Nicky, yes; Sienna no. On reflection, I think the Sienna character is central to the aforementioned themes... Just give us more of her with Blood. If the main theme is about how the violence of one generation has consequences for the subsequent generations, then we need to see more of Blood and his son, and Blood and Sienna. That storyline felt massively underdeveloped compared to Wolfie's. Also, who was Apollo? Apollo was simply Apollo, do you think this needs to be answered? He’s the second macguffin to this story to be honest. I don't think it's too complicated to think of him as the fellow that can see the future. He just is that way, by loading him with backstory, it doesn't really change the audience's expectations of him I feel. Yes and no... My main confusion with his role came from my earlier confusion about the money. Maybe if you clear this up -- how the money got there, what Apollo's involvement with this is (does he actually even want the money??!!!) -- that should be enough. How is this related to her earlier goal of becoming a boxing god? Hmm, this is interesting, because I don't think Wolfie cared all that much about this -- she just cared that she didn't want her reputation of twenty five years ruined. I try and explain this a few times, she had a fuck tonne of fights, over 200, this is just an incredibly long career as anybody who follows boxing knows, she lost a lot of those fights too, so it can be assumed she doesn't care about boxing legacy as such. I can't explain it, if you look at her dialogue with Apollo at the hospital and H at the gym, I feel as if it leans more towards her claiming that she's sacrificed everything for this sport, and it would destroy her if her reputation was tarnished. I don't think it's possible for her TO become a great boxer when her history is behind her. She's aging, not too old, but a solid amount older than Mayweather who's this time actually retiring at 38. She does want Blood to become the best in the sport though, but knows she's way past any redemption herself. Her goal is simple, she wants to murder her parents. She never agrees to kill Apollo. She even tells H to go fuck himself or something or other. OK, man... In that case, I would just try to show this a bit more... because, how I read the blackmail scene with Uncle H, was that Wolfie cared about her legacy, even if it was one of a journeyman. Maybe show her seriously not caring about becoming a great? What was with this whole 'creature' subplot as well? It was basically a metaphor for Sienna being the 'monster'. In my 7WC last year, for which the 10 pages are still up I think, it was featured strongly in that, it was just a nod to my other script, but again, Sienna being a monster and all. I was going to have Wolfie see these visions of a human-like structure building itself, skin, bones, nerve endings etc, throughout her story as hallucinations -- almost like something's crafting itself as we progress until it becomes a full fledge monster in Blood’s story, aka, Wolfie becoming lost in her mind but the page count wasn't working with me so I cut it. Yeah, I remember your previous entry with the winged beast. I actually really liked the monster part here... I just felt that the metaphor was lost. Is there a way that you could make this a little easier to decipher?

If anything that I've said above is unclear, just let me know, brother!

But there was a lot to like in here, seriously. So I hope my previous comments didn't come across negative, because this was easily my favourite script of yours that I have read recently. If you simplify some of the areas which were causing me confusion, then really beef up the themes you mentioned above, you'll have something great here.

Toby.

Hey, all, gonna run through these responses and try and get a feature read tonight as well.

So this inspector scene was a dream? Is it necessary to include? It confused the hell out of me
Haha, no, it wasn't, man! The scene PRIOR to that was a dream. This scene concluded that after that war, Wolfie struggled to find anybody who could find her killers -- so she hired this guy. And as it turns out, he doesn't have a clue where they are. Wolfie was never searching for any child, I don't remember any dialogue which alludes to that either. I had her talk about who he was searching with her, but thought it was too on the nose so I cut it.

we need to know that H found it randomly in a hole behind the lockers.
I outlined a large hole in the wall in the scene description earlier, and H claims he found it in a safe corner of the room. I thought the audience would assume it was hidden in the hole as that's where the lockers were torn away. I'll try and be clearer.

Is there no way you can possibly simplify this? Does it need to be this complicated?
I think it just read that much more complicated there as I was explaining pretty much everything that happened in the first chapter. It's just giving reasons as to why characters did what. It's honestly not too complicated at all. Bianchi wants Wolfie, De Luca is exchanging her for Apollo without her knowledge -- that's it.

but Wolfie's ..... and certainly Nicky Costa's were lost on me. Is it necessary for all four characters to possess similar skills?
I honestly think it is, if you notice, all four characters see each other as pretty much the prominent figures of their visions. They're connected so to say. That's why there are chapters there -- they're all vultures. I'm probably going to work on being clear what Wolfie can do, but Nicky Costa even says in his dialogue that he can indeed see the future. "Written by my hand... I could read the future -- it spoke to me." As writers, we're always dealt these bad deals where somebody says, "Well, you should've been clearer!" and once you do, they say, "Why do you have more than 1 scene outlining what we already know". It's hard to strike a meaningful balance.

Quoted from cloroxmartini I like your style of writing even if it doesn't "follow the rules." The story flowed, I got the images, however it became too much for me. Felt like I was in a dream all the time and couldn't get out. Too poetic? I don't know. Maybe I need more sleep and I can come back to it.

Clorox -- thanks for the comment, mate. It's unfortunate you struggled with some aspects. The way I write is very dear to me, I try and make it so the actions have a rhythmic flow and images and movements take shape with the story. It's hard to explain, there's only emphasis on the focus of what we're actually seeing rather than what's happening around it. For this script, yes, I'm starting to think it was a mistake as it seems there's a lot to remember and take in.

Quoted from Reef Dreamer and become off putting., well to me This is your style, although recent shorts didn't seem to be as dense.

Hey, Bill, thanks for the comments, mate. I assure you, the style's always been the same -- except for the good old Phantom Barber, where I purposely tried to hide it. Talking about that script, I actually remember that I quite liked it, probably one of my most favourite shorts that I've written. Anyway -- I really do think the style's the exact same. It's jarring in this, especially at the beginning because of multiple reasons. Most of them relating to a lack of knowledge on what time period everything's occurring and the differing characters POVs in the first few pages. I think the problem lies more with the plot rather than the writing itself -- it simply doesn't mesh well in this script. Although I do agree, with the lack of slugs and such -- I'll come back to this when I get to Jeff's comment.

P1 OC isn't that off camera, a TV term, rather than OS?
I hadn't noticed, I usually use OS, but for some moments, I simply don't have any attention on the character in the frame, but they're still in the same scene so it's not OS then. I now use OC exclusively for everything -- I think it works better.

But don't boxers fight bare topped so the scars would be clear?
I outline that Wolfie has a tonne of scars to cover those same scars up. Easy to miss, but I don't know how to make it clearer. They definitely do fight topless -- where I write "His chest is covered with dozens upon dozens of now-healed gashes -- almost like that of stab wounds." I could of course write it a second time, but not sure how beneficial that would be. Surgery nowadays hides them really well, which I honestly could've gotten away with, but this happened to her in the late 20s so I thought I'd play it safe and made them apparent, but at the same time, it's suggested Wolfie's cut herself on the chest to hide these same scars among others.

who is de Luca.. The name waste too end but without more I m not engaged
Again, the answers are there, spelt out with the answer to every question. De Luca says a few pages later --  "I run the biggest business in the West, these other fuckers, Bianchi and
Fontana have nothing on me...............I own the cartel, you fuckin’ Wolfgang Adolf Nazi fuck."

I have no idea what wolfie is after.
Haha, again, she says it, page 26 and 27 have a conversation dedicated to what both Apollo and Wolfie want. But I agree, the script is overloaded with information, too much I'm thinking... I'll get to this in a bit.

Quoted from Dreamscale Many of your Slugs just don't make any sense...and I think you're aware of that, but I'm not sure why you're doing it.

Yo, Jeff, thanks for the comments, mate. I definitely wasn't aware of it until these comments, expanding on what I said to Bill above -- I agree. I edited the BLOOD scene by a smidge after Toby had trouble with it, but I can now see that wasn't the problem. It ties within your comment later. I should've specified that scene, but I felt as if the audience would put relevance on the 'Shoddy Apartment', even though it's just a vessel for what's happening inside. What I want them to do is focus on what was happening to the characters. But because of the nameless characters and thick scenes, it becomes troublesome, no clear location as such. It's a shame it wasn't to your liking, as I don't think the writing's all that bad.

Okay, keeping all that in mind, the script's problem seems to be that there's too much going on with too much to remember. I'm leaning towards the fact that it's because of the Macguffin -- aka, the money. It doesn't relate to Wolfie's goal, I think she even says somewhere she doesn't care about the money. Except that the other characters do -- so the whole, Apollo needs his final death, De Luca wants the money via Apollo, Bianchi wants the money via Wolfie, H wants Wolfie to kill Apollo for the money, and Wolfie wants to search for the people that left her for dead. Would taking the middle man out, aka, the cash, help the script?

If in doubt, go for simplicity... that being said, removing the money would change the first chapter up, quite dramatically so. Any ideas what you'd do instead?

But chapter 1 was were most of the confusion arised, and a large part of this did stem from the money.

I'd still say that if the money is gonna' go, you should consider axing Nicky Costa a well, bro, as his role in this confused me far more than even more than the money did...

I didn't read the whole thing, but from what I read it was pretty damn good.  I liked it.  Not once did I feel like I was strolling through amateur city.  I would actually try to finish this, but I'm too tired and got too much going on.  I can't concentrate.

Hi Mo,

My final notes are below. Sorry, they are not very good, I just don't find myself good and reviewing this type of script. Not my forte.

The first thing to note...taking us to...

MY OVERVIEW

Is that I truly admire your writing voice. It so stands out. It has to be...by far...the most distinctive approach on SS. I cannot believe you can write something so dense in seven weeks. Amazing.

Throwing us to...

THE STORY, aka the narrative. A mean bugger that doesn't pull no punches, (i like that one considering the boxing story) cos it's got to get out there.

Where to start?

Who's story's are we following? - Having read the script, I can't answer that. So, the question for you is, do you want one? Well do ya punk? It is how most stories pan out and what keeps us following, IMO

Thread - what I found hard is keeping up with the flow, the order, the who.are we following  and how are they connected etc. in many ways you have taken a story over a few decades and jumbled it about. Oh, and the thrown in a future looking mystery element.

I never got to the bottom of what a murk was, what they saw in the future, how and why etc I feel this was just left behind. Almost forgotton.

I will finish with what I think you should do, which I appreciate won't be what you want to do,but I share it all the same.

1) keep your style

2) keep more linear - allow the style to jump out without distraction

3) don't be afraid to be clear when needed. I appreciate you do at time, but then for long portions it's like it's gone into a food blender

4) make this more from a single persons POV (a criticism my script got at coverage by the way) so we can follow it. Wolfi dominates it then disappears. And is dead for a chunk, but alive...

5) temper the mystery so that it is the right amount of salt on the story

6) I've run out of suggestions,but I suppose the final one would be not to worry about being normal, in terms of script writing, as the style will sing for itself

Best of luck


Carrying on...p42

P45 she was a champion
So Wolfies after Luther
There's a map to money? That's the map the others say doesn't exist

P49 let me get this right. De Luca wants Apollo the nigger. Wolfie wants to know where someone is
P49 how is the main drenching herself?
Oh and the maids got de Luca child - he's cold
Tall man....is this the future written
Apollo locks his one eye... Found that quite funny
So the son is called Ezekiel Warwick
P65 - I don't who where we are when she's pacing
Luther and Walter are the same...
So Wolfie was a child Slave, raped often and had a child..

Passing comment but recent pages have been clearer on what's happening, although I don't get Apollo

P74 Who is the old man...? Have we seem him before?
Chapter 2
Pages now throwing me off again
P80 Wolfie drops the crowbar...held by blood??
The raven talks....
Maxi...10.,, recounting the boxing promoter?? Seems strange
P83 Wolfies back??.
Chapter 3
Baby lying on a dried up lake ... You do t half have some Images...
Wolfies back as VO
Chapter 4 - 1953?
Wolfie and sienna - not sure what's been about
So far a seperate story of sienna as nanny in an earlier time to the angel child Sophia
Sienna and Louis - it could be relevant but I wonder...let's see
P104 Wolfie murdered...yup all the Images, gun shots, blood, fights, fake deaths, reborn, people living again...I find it hard to reference back
What's a murk? Still don't know ...winged thing?

By119 I think this is 'taking me...' To the drugs cabinet for headache relief

Finished. Every. Single. Line. (Ps that's a joke not a put down, just to be clear)

One or two missing commas but I won't go into that... because it doesn't matter. The first niggle I have is with the double character dialogue for the social worker. She has dialogue for social worker and as woman. Probably best to keep calling her woman and just describe her as a social worker type as you have done.

Wolfie's introduction is a little confusing because he's 40s at first, riddled with bullets. Then in the next scene he's mid 40s, and I can't figure out if this is backward or forward in time. I think his initial description needs to say either early 40s or late 40s. There's a bullet wound, but he's not riddled with bullets wounds as he should be. Perhaps, if you showed him being riddled with bullet wound scars then we get the message more clearly that this is post shooting. It could still be pre-shooting though as it's only one bullet wound scar. I'm sure the narrative will help me catch up later down the line, but some clarity here wouldn't hurt at all.

I'm not a fan of Wolfie's V.O. It's not the V.O. in as much as what he's actually saying. If this was on TV, I'd seriously consider switching it off at this point.

WOLFIE (V.O.)
This world... What has it come to? How does one even become enveloped in the scum that plagues this city in the first place?

There are a lot of words used and it just comes across as cheese to me. From then on, I zone out with the rest of the claptrap. It's ripped from a million different films and comic books, only not done as well. I think you could strip out this poor attempt at preachy dialogue and it will improve the script.

You've done it again with Apollo. One character has dialogue under two character names. It's OK to read, I'm just concerned that perhaps, when it comes time to make this, there may be some confusion later down the line as to how many speaking parts there actually are. From a reader perspective it's fine... but it takes a lot of people to make a film and the less confusing things are, the better.


SLICKED
Vulture in appearance, gonna hand me over the details, or am I gonna have to blow your fuckin’ head off?

I don't understand what he means by 'Vulture in appearance,'

APOLLO
Your fate is murk.

Do you mean, murky?

I am finding myself a little put off by the structure of this script at the moment, or maybe I'm just blaming that for the lack of clarity. It all seems very dream-like, which is probably why my mind is starting to wander. It was OK at first, but now 27 pages in and I still don't feel this story has a clear sense of direction.

WOLFIE
You might be able to stop these savages a second before they emerge but I can sure as shit guarantee that you will never see your real death comin’. You need me, I need you.

The above is a logic quagmire.

Louis Armstrong -- what a coincidence. I used a Louis Armstrong track in mine too.

I'm at 38 or 39 and finally getting into the story.

I'm into the 70s now and tempted to start skipping... pages, that is. I think this would actually play out way better on screen. There's a pulp fiction style to the narrative, like Sin City, that I like. It concentrates on strong visuals with the pulp-like plot more in the background. It hasn't been precisely nailed yet, but for 7 weeks work this is on its way.

I don't care too much for the money aspect in all of this... but it's a sideplot that has its uses. It will be the strong visuals that make this film memorable, in my opinion, and the sideplot helps add more.

End of chapter one. I'll do chapter 2 in a separate post.

Quoted from Toby_E As promised, here's part two of my reply!

Yo, Tobes. Italics like always. Thanks for getting back, mate.

IMO, this script shouldn't be less than about 140 pages.
I have seen The Place Beyond the Pines -- but funnily enough, despite me enjoying that film a substantial amount, I thought its weakness was that we didn't spend enough time with some of the characters. Except maybe Bradley Cooper. Of course, I want the script to be very long, but I don't have the luxury of doing that, on that end though, the longest script to win the Nicholl was I think ~152 pages? But I'm going for under 120 for a viable draft.

It's always hard for me to cut scripts, I think cutting past the first 25 pages in the first chapter would hurt the story some. That first act seems to be my bane. Nicky Costa is also painful to cut, because without him, the story comes from convenience. Say, if he never found the money, and H came across it coincidently, no mobsters would be involved as Nicky never told them that Apollo knew where it was. Granted, it's my job to find these answers, but cutting his presence adds the same amount of exposition and scenes anyway trying to remedy the situation.

To be honest, I actually never imagined Blood's story being longer than this in the outline stage. I of course wanted a few more pages, but I was okay with it being what it was. It was Sienna's and Nicky Costa's which took up the bulk of the story. Although, in saying that, he did play a role in Sienna's story when she comes to California. I'm honestly not sure what to do any more.

My issue wasn't with the actions, but rather you'd spent the past 20ish pages setting Sienna up as this nice character, that her actions just came so out of left-field, with no apparent trigger. I feel she needs a reason for this dark side to come to the fore front.
Haha, this is hard, dude -- because in my mind at least, I don't think she needs a trigger at all in the slightest. Which some peeps are obviously going to disagree with. She's just insane, if I suddenly make her more humanistic, if I give her features that denote there's something off about her from the get go, the thirst for reasoning in the audience's mind increases. "Well, those clues weren't big enough! I want more!" -- it's a downfall for the type of plot point, nobody will ever be satisfied. Like good old Louis says, they don't need reasoning, they're just bad.

I can see why it doesn't feel satisfying though, as I cut this major portion out, which I'm not sure I should re-add to the story. It was that -- Blood settles on Sienna as the woman who raped  Solomon, but the audience doesn't believe it. Why? Because she's as harmless as a fly, like we've always seen her until we actually see her kill Sofia. But this was just pushed down to a 1 page moment where Maxi confronts her and uhh, it didn't want to mesh with me so I cut it. I don't think this will remedy it, I'm not sure what will honestly. I'll see what I do.

then beef these central parts?
I'll see how it goes, mate. I don't think I'll add more story, I'll see what I can cut. It will hurt the script, most definitely, but it might be possible to cut Wolfie's story by 20 pages so we can stay with Sienna for a while as she goes to California. Will dwell on all of this as this is a large change.

does he actually even want the money?
Okay, yeah, I see what the problem is now. In Nicky Costa's chapter, we were meant to have this subplot where he saves Apollo from death in exchange of the information and how Apollo even got this same information. Will work on this definitely.

So I hope my previous comments didn't come across negative
Not at all, brother, same from my comments to your script!

Any ideas what you'd do instead?
So, it seems the money isn't the problem, it's just that nobody knows what Wolfie can do, and what she wants. The latter being the most important part, this is just incredibly easy to fix. I just need to rewrite the first act into something more feasible -- I do agree that a large part of the problems came from there.

Quoted from dead by dawn I didn't read the whole thing, but from what I read it was pretty damn good.  I liked it.  Not once did I feel like I was strolling through amateur city.  I would actually try to finish this, but I'm too tired and got too much going on.  I can't concentrate.

Thanks, mate, I guess that's a good thing about the style since a few professional writers write in a similar manner, but I refined it to something I feel reads like we're having the images splayed across for us turn by turn. We only focus on what we're actually seeing.

Quoted from Reef Dreamer Is that I truly admire your writing voice. It so stands out. It has to be...by far...the most distinctive approach on SS. I cannot believe you can write something so dense in seven weeks. Amazing.

Yo, Bill, thanks for reading the script, mate. I'll get to yours next, but I've just been very busy, and actually will be for a little while longer. I'm glad you admire the style in some sense, even though it isn't your forte. I think constructing scenes like these do take longer, but once you get that rhythm going -- Taking us to... BLACK -- eyes watch us. Squinting. Unsure. Our vision gliding across... etc, etc -- it becomes normal. That was a bad example I made up at the spot, but there are definitely uses for this type of style.

Who's story's are we following? - Having read the script, I can't answer that. So, the question for you is, do you want one? Well do ya punk? It is how most stories pan out and what keeps us following, IMO
It's more that, we're following Wolfie's story, but discovering these threads along the way which expand that same story. There's a large world at display here, it's important to note that Wolfie is the protagonist for most of the story since she's arguably the most active out of all these characters. We could've followed De Luca, Nicky Costa, Apollo or even Blood. The thing is, the story's already in motion and has been in motion -- Wolfie happens to get intertwined in it and then suddenly becoming the driving force in everybody's life. I think it's fine if we settle on the lack of a clear protag, because everything builds off the previous plot point.

what they saw in the future, how and why
Yeah, I'm thinking I'll refine this out in the future drafts as a few people had trouble with it.

make this more from a single persons POV (a criticism my script got at coverage by the way) so we can follow it
I think this criticism doesn't apply to every script, but readers label it when they think that's the reason it doesn't work. Personally, I don't think for this script that the problem is we follow it from a single POV, it's simply that if you do change it to a single POV, it eliminates many of the problems that come with having multi-layered narratives. I'll think about this one.

I've run out of suggestions,but I suppose the final one would be not to worry about being normal, in terms of script writing, as the style will sing for itself
Cheers, mate! I hope so.

So Wolfie was a child Slave, raped often and had a child..
Not a slave, but yes. I'm not sure about the latter part yet, I still haven't decided, if I make it so, then she would've been a little older than 18 when it happened currently -- so that wouldn't entirely work unless I change when she was born. I'm thinking of switching her birthdate 5 years after, so I can use Death Valley's temperature rise as a focal point -- and this would've also solidify Blood's birth. But then again, I had different ideas on how he was born. Something I'll look at.

although I don't get Apollo
Sorry, mate, Toby made a similar comment, but how so? Trying to gauge this out.

What's a murk?
"darkness or thick mist that makes it difficult to see" from Google.

Quoted from DustinBowcot Wolfie's introduction is a little confusing because he's 40s at first, riddled with bullets. Then in the next scene he's mid 40s

Hey, mate, thanks for the read. You're right, but I can't figure out a way for this to work without confusing the audience. I'm up for suggestions, as by calling her the same age, the audience will wonder when it is. I want to say early 40s, when it obviously isn't, but I need the audience to think she was somehow younger in that first scene. Your suggestion could work, I'll give it a go after I read Bill's script.

I'm not a fan of Wolfie's V.O. It's not the V.O. in as much as what he's actually saying. If this was on TV, I'd seriously consider switching it off at this point.
That's a shame, because I'd really like to at least keep something. I had another monologue written down originally, but it was a little more obscure and out there. Although I felt it was too racist and redneck sounding for its own good. I'll see how I go.

You've done it again with Apollo.
This is honestly half/half -- many people recommend, whether professional or amateur, that you don't introduce a character by their actual name until we read their full introduction. Which I agree with, since we're taking a long break before we meet Apollo. Maybe they'll won't forget this specific name, but if it was John, I'd wager some folks would be left scratching their heads on who he was and where we met them in the story.

Louis Armstrong -- what a coincidence. I used a Louis Armstrong track in mine too.
Ha! Really? I must've missed it. I was listening to some jazz prior to writing this, so it was a good chance to implement some actual culture in something set in the late 1940s.

I don't care too much for the money aspect in all of this... but it's a sideplot that has its uses
Yeah, I've began to notice the money isn't the problem entirely, it's just that there's not enough focus on a few different aspects of the script. I might keep the money, but I'll see what else I can do with it. The next few chapters are more dialogue based than Chapter 1, which might make it easier to read. Looking forward to your comments.

Hey Mo,

I got through all of this but, like others, had a lot clarity and comprehension issues. First I want to say that I like that you've got a style of your own that's letting you stand out. I think you're still refining it, but the style itself was actually not my main issue. There were certainly moments I got pulled up, but for the most part I got a handle of the location pretty quickly and could tell what the characters were doing inside that location.

However that, the mixture of time jumps, dreams and visions, a more-complex-than-necessary plot, and the odd manner in which people talked and conversed, all combined to overwhelm me. At times it seemed like every single element that could be made challenging, was.

For me, the most challenging element was the dialogue. I'm not sure why the characters talked the way they did. It seemed at times they were more interested in sounding poetic than in conveying actual information to each other.  For instance, when Apollo (as Man) tells Wolfie, "I know you... and your blood." Not only does it not strike me as something a near death accident victim might say, the term 'blood' is vague. It turns out it means her parents, but it could mean other things too. Wolfie shares psychic traits with other people, could it not describe that bond as well? It also turns out Wolfie has a son named Blood, so this guy could be talking about a specific person. If, however, he'd simply said, "...and your parents" we're done. All that’s left is the question ‘who are Wolfie’s parents?”, which I think is what you wanted people asking there.

Not only did this make it hard to take in the necessary exposition, it alienated me from the characters themselves. It made me unable to key in on the emotions they were feeling, because i often could not intuit an emotion from the odd way they chose to phrase things. An example from page 17...

(WOLFIE
Got a feelin’ that ain’t too much
on the legal end.

UNCLE H
Your fallacies tell you that?

WOLFIE
The fuck did you just say?)

The first place I pull up is Uncle H's line. I’m not really sure what it means (especially in light of the fact that the money isn't legal). I’m guessing the gist is “you’re mistaken”, but it’s a very odd way to phrase it. Since I’m tripped up on the meaning, I'm also not sure how he says it. Jokingly? Sarcastic? Angry? Then when Wolfie responds, "The fuck you just say?", I don't know if she's offended or if she, like me, actually doesn't understand what he said. As a result, any emotional content being exchanged between the too is lost as well.

I offered up a few more examples in my notes, but I wanted to go into it a little up front since it ended up preoccupying a lot of my thoughts while I read this.

Anyway, on to my notes…

Pg. 1 Don’t want to get too nitpicky up front, but describing the WHISPERS we hear as “inaudible” can’t be correct. Perhaps ‘indecipherable’ or ‘indistinguishable’ because we can’t understand what they’re saying?

Off the bat the initial conversation is confusing to me, and I’m afraid I’m gonna have to break it down to explain it...

(GIRL: Don’t mean like that, Miss. I always see ‘em... Just not you.)
Who is “them”?

(SOCIAL WORKER: Everyone?)
So she’s confused too. Good. Though I’d prefer if she asked the more intuitive question I asked above, “Who is ‘them’?”

(GIRL: Whole world sometimes)
This doesn’t clarify much, if anything. She can see everyone in the world? How? When? And why didn’t she just say, “sometimes”? Are ‘the whole world’ and ‘everyone’ not the same thing?

(SOCIAL WORKER: Folks told me you had a little scuffle earlier, wanna tell me your version of the story?)
And yet the Social Worker changes the subject, as if she both understood and is uninterested in the idea of this Girl seeing everyone in the world.

(GIRL: Don’t blink... Or you’ll miss everything.)
This is a complete non-sequitur to the Social Worker’s question.

(“The Social Worker frowns, confused.”)
Okay, good. But then…

(SOCIAL WORKER: Where’d you learn to say that?)
Why not, “What are you talking about?" It’s not like the Girl recited a dirty limerick, or used the word ‘commensurate’ in a sentence. There’s nothing unique or unlikely about the specific phrase or words she used, it’s the phrase’s context in the conversation that makes no sense. Or to put it another way, if the Girl told the Social Worker where she learned the phrase, would it make the Social Worker any less confused?

(GIRL: The ones in the dreams told me. Also said there are more of us.)
I wonder if the Social Worker’s odd phrasing of the question was just an excuse to get the Girl talking about her dreams.

(SOCIAL WORKER: What kind of dreams are those?)
None of her questions are intuitive. Why isn’t she asking about the “us” part instead of the dreams. Children have dreams. That’s not news. Children thinking they’re part of a team of telepaths or something, that's important. I’d equate this to a friend walking up to me and saying, “I just came from the doctor’s office and he says I have an incurable disease.” Only for me to respond, “What kind of office is it?”

Now there’s probably something going on under the surface of this scene. I assume the Social Worker knows more about what’s happening than she lets on, but only because it’s the best way to make sense of her odd conversational approach. But even if there’s an explanation for the confusing bits of every line, there shouldn’t have to be an explanation to make sense of every line. The audience won’t have time to parse it out like I have. They’ll just be confused.

Pg. 4 One the danger of this writing style is you need to take everything into account. You say that the Man and Woman are silhouetted, but you don’t say how. Since they were “towering above him”, I filled in the sun as the source of silhouetting light. Then you said he leans against a wall and looks to a stairwell and now I have to scrap my initial image. Or do I? Are they inside or outside? And I still don’t know what is happening in the environment that would cause the Man and Woman to be silhouetted rather than just seen.

Now I don’t want to make it sound as though the writing is horrible. It’s actually quite good in places. It’s just that the style throws up additional obstacles that you wouldn’t otherwise be dealing with in a more conventional style.

Pg. 6 “Not cleaned as often as it’s used.” What bathroom is?

Pg. 19 I’ve had to read this conversation between Wolfie and Uncle H twice now to try to get everything out of it. I understand what’s being asked of Wolfie, and the leverage being used against her, but I still can’t make heads or tails of Uncle H’s relationship with the ‘wops’ and the Germans and the ‘negro’. I can’t figure out what he has to do with any of it. And this line…

“Planes to Iran cost green. Planning any more of those soon?”

...is the most confusing one of the lot.

Pg. 21 “INT. OFFICE - PRESENT DAY (2000-2015)”

I would suggest changing “Present Day” to “Modern Era” or something. Jan 1st, 2000 is not the present day.

Reading on, I see nothing in the scene that would suggest any specific year at all. How exactly is the audience suppose to catch on to this? If it’s meant to be superimposed, that should be written out correctly.

Pg. 28 Once again, I feel like I would have to reread the whole conversation to figure out why Wolfie is saving Apollo instead of killing him. EDIT: Okay, so she used Apollo to find her family. But it seems a little coincidental that Apollo just happened to have this info. And if this is so important to Wolfie, why hasn’t she been doing this all along? Her entire goal appears to change out of thin air. I’m beginning to think the reason I was lost here was because it requires too many leaps of logic. As with the opening scene, the less intuitive it is, the harder it is to buy into, and having the characters explain huge goal shifts and motivations with somewhat obtuse language (“Do you exchange your family’s fate upon the veracity of those words?”) doesn’t help either.

Pg. 30 “CRACK -- a small panel is knocked loose from above.” Are they entering through a boarded up window? ‘Small panel’ and ‘from above’ are pretty vague descriptors.

(APOLLO: Don't chase!) This is a continuing symptom of a lot of the dialogue. Why didn’t he just say "Wait" or "stay"? Normal people say those things. No one I know would blurt out "don't chase" in that situation. It’s a phrase that’s more at home in scolding a dog. Apollo also says this before the reader is clued in that Wolfie might chase. At the very least have Wolfie run off with Apollo yelling after him.

Pg. 33 Wolfie says, “It’s him”. Apollo says “it’s not”. Am I supposed to know who Hamburg is? Or who they think he may or may not be? Why are they acting indignant that he called the cops? He’s an old dude and they just broke in, what do they expect?

(APOLLO: He only has the information to find your monsters. I do not know their names. Only Jimmy De Luca, the man in the dreams. He can give us them in exchange of --)

I’m beginning to suspect I’ll never know what exactly is going on here. Even when the characters seem to be giving exposition that should help, it doesn’t.

Pg. 34 Every reason Wolfie gives to kill Hamburg if he doesn't talk is a reason to kill Hamburg even if he does talk. I'm not sure why he'd cooperate if Wolfie's just revealed they'll have to kill him no matter what.

Pg. 41  Was ‘debacle’ supposed to be ‘debate’? Debacle doesn't really describe what they're doing.

Pg. 43 I like the idea that the disposable guard has a family, and all the other disposable guards are angry at his death. Usually these types of throwaway characters just wait around to be shot, so it's funny thinking of them playing cards at lunch or something.

Pg. 50 With Wolfie having no reaction to a pregnant sex slave being beaten right in front of her, it’s really hard to care about what she’s after. There needs to be a character we can emotionally tie to or, in lieu of that, the situation needs to be interesting. But right now everyone is a dick, and the situation is too confusing to be intriguing.

(DE LUCA: Past tense. Was scum. Meaning he wasn’t always scum?)
Huh? No. That's not what that means. Is De Luca being cheeky here? The only reason you'd emphasize 'was' is to ask whether he's presently scum. Which he's not because he's dead. But then De Luca says, "Meaning he wasn’t always scum? ‘Least not before he got murdered". So the guy wasn't always scum, then he was murdered and became scum?

Pg. 70 I know by now I might just be playing catch up, but if Wolfie is so heartless that she basically kills everyone she meets, why did she bother saving Apollo? Did she know him? Was that not a random occurrence that happened right in front of her. Why would the person who lets women be beaten right in front of them bother to intervene in a car explosion?

to be continued...

...continued

Pg. 78 I feel like you should be emphasizing Wolfie here instead on The Curtains. You put the curtains and mention her fingers and I’m getting a close up in my head, but it can’t be a close up because then I wouldn’t know it’s Wolfie.

Also, after looking at it for a bit, I realize Wolfie is probably supposed to be Blood. This is another danger with a surreal style, there’s absolutely no reason to believe that Wolfie wouldn’t randomly pop up in some dreamlike scene, so it’s almost an impossible mistake to pinpoint. Even now, I’m still not certain.

Pg. 80 SCATTER isn’t a sound element, as it appears here. Maybe if paired with something, like the ‘SCATTERING of marbles’.

Pg. 82 It seems extremely unlikely that the school would leave it up to Maxi to inform her dad about scars on her brother’s private parts. If they didn’t inform the dad, then they would be informing the police. I suppose they could be covering up for a teacher, but then why tell Maxi. It’s too much to think through and the entire chapter is over in a page, so I don’t have any clarity on that.

Pg. 83 You mention Wolfie again. And again, I’m unsure if it’s intentional.

pg. 95 "Seclude time for yourself" I'm guessing that means ‘make time for yourself’, but once again, why state it in such an odd way. It's not as if it's period appropriate.

Pg. 103 "I think... He was a good man" Based on what?

Pg. 110 The whole Sienna story isn’t really affecting me much. I don’t have any feel for who she is or why she’s doing what she’s doing. Why did she kill Sofia? Why is she killing Maxi? What relationship does she even have to Maxi and Blood that would bring her there, and now that we return to Maxi and Blood, what was up with the raven and that creature from before. It’s just kind of dropped like it doesn’t matter. Once again, the dialogue doesn’t help me figure out much and then there’s cross-cutting through three different time periods. Sienna’s face morphs into Bloods, but they aren’t the same person so what purpose did it serve other than to momentarily confuse me? The whole thing feels like dreams fading into each other, which could be cool, but I have no sense of any narrative or message intended.

Just for instance, Sienna says she was promised more and starts talking about “the cost”. I have no idea what she’s talking about. Is this important or meant to be surreal? It should be important as I imagine because she’s explaining her motive, but even during what should be relatively straight-forward exposition, I find myself unable to follow what people actually mean.

Pg. 112 Why is Blood sitting and talking calmly? Wasn’t he just trying to break the door down because Sienna was trying to kill Maxi? He should be rushing in and cracking her skull open, not lazing about ruminating on boxing. He has no reason to. No reason she needs to know about his career and, as far as I can see, it has no significance to the reader.

Pg. 120 “the Woman who will birth a son that will forever change boxing.” But did we ever really see him change boxing? I saw someone wearing a medal, and Blood and Wolfie sure like to talk about the sport in general, but I never got the sense they were that big. But more importantly, I can’t figure out what it matters to the story whether or not they changed boxing. If they’d been backyard wrestlers would the plot be significantly different? You could still have the mob, some localized fame and some pondering over what the sport did to them. You could probably eliminate sports entirely and retain 90% of the plot beats.

In closing, I wish I could say more or offer up suggestions about the overall story. From where I’m standing it could use more focus, but where I’m standing is a place of incomprehension.

I do wonder if all, or any, of the characters need to be psychic. The characters’ fates seemed to be on rails, and they didn’t really take any serious steps to avoid the inevitable. Maybe if you made a bigger point of them trying to avoid fate, but they seemed to be in denial at best, content to let fate have its way with them.

I also think any commentary about the sport of boxing needs a rework. Wolfie often said the sport ruined her, so it felt at times like you wanted to explore the idea of boxing and the long term effects it has on the boxers. My problem with that was Wolfie was also violently beaten and sexually abused as a child. I could see no evidence that she was a decent person before boxing, nor any indication that boxing was the thing that made her violent. As a result, all her talk about what the sport did to her just came off a self-serving denialism to me. She’s always been bad, boxing didn’t do anything to her. But I’m not sure if that’s what you intended. If you really want to raise the question of the effect boxing had, we need some evidence that Wolfie was a decent, if troubled person before she even got into boxing.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. I can see from your exchanges with Toby that you’ve thought this through and have got some really interesting ideas. It’s good to be ambitious in storytelling, but it’s also necessary to have focus. Whatever’s in the story that doesn’t need to be in the story needs to be expendable. I sense you’ve got a lot of darlings to kill here, but if you shave it off in the right places, you can still have something that’s unique and intriguing; that’s dealing with the themes you want while not getting in the reader’s way of understanding it.

Good luck with the rewrite and congrats on finishing a script in 7 (or was it 4?) weeks.

Cheers,
Eric

Code In the Lounge as she feels the knob.

Made me chuckle. It's just so out of the blue.

I'm left with the sense that I have just read a graphic novel. It's a very intense story and one that will take reading a few times to fully appreciate, which as a graphic novel would be easy, as a script, not so much. It takes really having to think about what's going on and concentrate on every nuance.

Find graphic novel creators and pitch them with this story, I feel this is perfect for that market. Film couldn't really do this justice. Your style in general is well suited to graphic novels in my opinion. I read another story of yours, I think it was a short, some crazy sci-fi thing.

You already know what you need to do to improve this script, but I think most of the complaints are purely down to how difficult it is to read rather than any actual story issues. At the same time though, I don't think you should change anything... well, not much. It will work fine as a graphic novel and some of the images will be amazing.

Something for you to think about. Good luck, whatever you choose to do.

Started yours today. Just wanted to let you know that I really dig your style of writing. You've come a long way. Only 10 pages in so far, but it looks good. Very good.  

Quoted from EWall433 I'm not sure why the characters talked the way they did. It seemed at times they were more interested in sounding poetic than in conveying actual information to each other

Yo, Eric, thanks for the read, brother, appreciated. This is a very interesting comment, as I spend a lot of time on dialogue when writing. In this case, I definitely wasn't trying to be thick or overtly confusing, but it's nice reading the comments. Usually, I feel as if my dialogue isn't this 'out there', I just felt the characters and point in time in this specific script forced me to play with it a lot more than I usually do. Will expand on this later.

"I know you... and your blood."
Lines like these -- I know how obnoxious this sounds, but it was on purpose. The confusion of the audience lies in the confusion of Wolfie -- the way Apollo says it, it puts Wolfie on guard, what the hell does he mean by 'my blood'? Does he mean my son? Does he mean my parents? Does he mean our psychics? Hence the whole, what did you just say? I know a script like this calls for the audience to put on their Primer glasses and focus, but stuff like this shouldn't need to be dissected. Granted, I can say "or your parents", but it puts strain on me as I don't want the audience to know they're Wolfie's parents that left her until later. Right now, it's this kooky fellow spouting some crazy shit which induces a reaction from Wolfie.

As a result, any emotional content being exchanged between the too is lost as well.
That specific moment, yes, you're right -- I edited the structure of the scene, funnily enough, all three lines were from different points of escalation, thus, the rhythm gets ruined. Wolfie replies to H saying "The fuck did you just say?" when he mentions her son, and I had parenthesis there too. Again, it's an excuse and the audience could care less, but I'll look into it.

Don’t want to get too nitpicky up front, but describing the WHISPERS we hear as “inaudible” can’t be correct. Perhaps ‘indecipherable’ or ‘indistinguishable’ because we can’t understand what they’re saying?
Nitpicky is good at the start, as that's what puts forth a reader's first and sometimes even last judgement on the script.

Who is “them”?
Again, time period as such -- she's a girl that grew up in 1910 America at an orphanage, so she struggles with words and getting across her thoughts. In this case, this is going to sound obnoxious once more, but I want the audience to decide who 'them' is. I hint it towards the Social Worker saying 'everyone?' like you pointed out, but her saying 'Who is them?' does not feel natural to me at all. It's that, if she says that, I feel as if it's almost aggressive, the Social Worker feels that she's simply playing along with the Girl's game, thus, it doesn't entirely matter what she says as long as long she gets her talking. Think of it like this "I ALWAYS see them" "Wow, you can't possibly see everyone though?" -- then why didn't I just write that? It just doesn't read nicely to me.

Again, to your later comments, the lack of absolutely clearness is a major part of what constitutes good dialogue against mediocre. People's speech is flawed, nobody is as articulate as they think they are. I'm not saying mine is one or the other, the whole point of the scene isn't who is 'them' or what kind of dreams they are, all that needs to come out of it is that the audience needs to know that the Girl can see people's death. Granted, you're probably asking why I didn't just say that -- which is a good point. But then again, you could make every plot point occur in half a page if you really wanted to. I agree that this isn't the best way to start the script, which I'll definitely change as I think other folks had some small problems with it.

Although, I disagree about the Social Worker asking where she learned to say it -- she's young, poor, a girl (in 1913), without parents, maybe it's not too far of a stretch to say she was smart enough to say this, but from what I've seen, I think it's a worthy response.

I just came from the doctor’s office and he says I have an incurable disease.” Only for me to respond, “What kind of office is it?”
Ha! That's a good point, I agree with this too. But on that end, dreams aren't as defined as what an office could be. An office is an office, a dream is anything -- although, there's not much of an answer to 'What kind of dreams?' anyway, so I'm not sure what the social worker was expecting either.

“Planes to Iran cost green. Planning any more of those soon?”
Yeah... This was a troublesome one which I looked at, it's an Easter egg of sorts I guess for those who understand it. In that era of time, surgeries for transgender people was a large struggle. Iran was one of the first countries to deem it 'lawful'. I didn't do my history check on this one as I should have, but I don't think they were doing them in the 1930s? Thus, you're right, this doesn't make any sense. But they were doing them in Germany, although, I felt as if I'd have H say this, the audience would either assume Wolfie's serving there again, or that Wolfie is some secret nazi, and it was a tough time for money in the 1930s so I switched it to Iran. The line shouldn't be there, but it gave me a good chuckle so I left it.

I would suggest changing “Present Day” to “Modern Era” or something. Jan 1st, 2000 is not the present day.
Good point.

And if this is so important to Wolfie, why hasn’t she been doing this all along?
She has, it's just lost in the whole plethora of information. She doesn't know where the ones that left her for dead are, I don't think I explicitly state they're her parents until much, much later into the script, it would be interesting to know how you came to that conclusion. The point is -- she doesn't know who they are, just that the ones in the photographs left her for dead. She does her (piss poor) method of checking the obituary, but other than that, besides hiring the detective, there's not much else she can do. She has nothing but that picture. She also served in the war which is a solid portion of her life, and although I don't state this, the great depression occurred just prior which threw everything into a pile of shit anyway. She has her first real chance -- she knows a supposed psychic, and she takes it. Her goal does not change at all through the script, it's just lost I feel. She will stop at nothing to kill the ones that left her for dead, it's just that it's easy to assume it's ever-changing with H introducing the money and telling her to kill Apollo.

Why didn’t he just say "Wait" or "stay"? Normal people say those things.
Besides being a psychic, he knows Wolfie's tendencies from the hospital. I like that you mention a dog, she always chases. I don't think "Wait" or "Stay" work at all personally, maybe "Don't" would. This isn't a story about normal people.

With Wolfie having no reaction to a pregnant sex slave being beaten right in front of her, it’s really hard to care about what she’s after.
But if it doesn't fit into her character to save her, why should she? She has nothing to do with this, and what can she do? Beat De Luca? She only cares about one thing, whether that makes her likeable or not, she could care less about the maid being beaten. I hoped the audience would stand next to Wolfie, she's not the best of people, sure, but she's better than everybody else we've seen so far (except maybe Apollo). I quite liked this scene too, a bit unfortunate.

but if Wolfie is so heartless that she basically kills everyone she meets, why did she bother saving Apollo? Did she know him?
Excellent point actually, there's no real reason for her to converse with him at the jail either after the focus is on De Luca. Will look into this.

Also, after looking at it for a bit, I realize Wolfie is probably supposed to be Blood
Yep, glad you (and a few other peeps) caught onto this. It's definitely not meant to be Wolfie. A simple typo.

It seems extremely unlikely that the school would leave it up to Maxi to inform her dad about scars on her brother’s private parts
They don't, they simply ask her whether she knows anything about what's happening at home. They want to keep it secret for now, or else it gives the perpetrator a chance to escape the situation if needed. I guess it's a bit of a stretch that they would wait to be certain, but then again, this was a long time ago and we can assume different. I'll definitely look into this though as I too had the same thought.

Based on what?
She's not saying as much as she knows -- will make this clearer. It was a hint that she's manipulative.

Why is she killing Maxi?
She wasn't, was probably the wording. Sienna's just bad, Toby also came across the same point so it's something to look into, although, with the direction of the notes I'm getting, I think I know what and where to go. I'll type them up at the end so peeps can throw their thoughts on the second draft.

Sienna says she was promised more and starts talking about “the cost”.
Again, there's meaning, and the audience should decide for themselves what it is as I hate to ruin it. Page 11, Sienna's vision in Wolfie's dream says "How much does this love cost to you?" -- with then another Girl, which we can assume is now Sofia 100 pages later, emerging. It was at the cost of love, Wolfie's love for her son or Sienna's lack of. She wants to feel, but she can't. Page 111, she says
"Let the love consume you too. Let
destiny eat you alive. Just like it
showed me. Just like I’ll show you."
Again, the audience doesn't need to pick up on it, but it definitely does have meaning.

Why is Blood sitting and talking calmly?
You're right, it was to cut the page length down so I spliced two scenes into one. It didn't work.

You could probably eliminate sports entirely and retain 90% of the plot beats.
I think I could eliminate the whole 'being the best' aspect, which I think I will now that a few peeps have mentioned it -- but Wolfie being a boxer is important to the script. In revenge-type stories, people have skills (as Liam Neeson puts it), Wolfie's is that she's a boxer with an unstable personality. Hand to hand, she'll win no contest with 99% of the population. Maybe even into the decimals if I changed her into a heavyweight.

I do wonder if all, or any, of the characters need to be psychic.
It's simply a story about psychics, but, you know, this is actually a great point. I do try and put emphasis, but there's just not enough space. This actually made me think, and honestly, this whole psychic business is putting a lot of strain on the story. I think this is where the confusion is building, glad you wrote this because I pondered on this for a few days (was very busy this past week so I couldn't write anything here), and I decided that it doesn't need to be there. It just gives Wolfie reason to start her story, but if you eliminate Nicky Costa, Apollo's emergence is by chance (which doesn't work), and as I'm thinking of eliminating Nicky, why complicate the narrative by adding precognition when I can simply have somebody tell Wolfie to find Hamburg or De Luca as part of her own story. Will expand on this a little later.

I sense you’ve got a lot of darlings to kill here, but if you shave it off in the right places, you can still have something that’s unique and intriguing; that’s dealing with the themes you want while not getting in the reader’s way of understanding it.
You're right, I really do struggle with cutting my scripts and it's a problem. Apologies if I came across as defensive in this post, I was simply trying to relay across my thoughts. I don't mean anything by it, and it's always nice to take it into account. Thanks for the read, mate, I'm going to lay out what I want to do with the story soon.

Quoted from DustinBowcot I'm left with the sense that I have just read a graphic novel.

That's an interesting point, never thought about it that way. It could work, in fact, it very well could -- I haven't read any myself, but I heard Watchmen was very similar to its source material. The film's always been a large inspiration in how I write funnily enough, I'll look into it. Cheers.

Quoted from Grandma Bear Started yours today. Just wanted to let you know that I really dig your style of writing. You've come a long way. Only 10 pages in so far, but it looks good. Very good.

Hey, Pia. Thanks for the comment. The writing is usually half/half, some people just hate it, others really enjoy it. It has come a long way! How far have you read the script? I'm going to try and get a second draft done this month if all goes to plan, would you mind waiting out until then? Unless of course, you've done a substantial amount of reading already, then I guess it's fine. After I finish with Bill's and Eric's script, I'll get onto whatever you want me to read. Although, in saying that, I'm still quite busy for a little while so it might take some time.

Okay, I've been thinking about the direction of the second draft and I finally have something I can attach myself to. The story is Wolfie's first and foremost, so it should remain like that for the whole story. That means gutting the chapters out, which isn't problematic as I can simply write another feature about Nicky, Sienna or Blood regardless if I wanted to.

Boiling it down to the basics, the story is about Wolfie trying to get revenge. Because the chapters aren't there, the need for the precognition doesn't matter, so we can scrap that and probably also Apollo. To add urgency, I can make it so Wolfie's coming straight out of the war and is on the hunt right from the beginning. I make it clear what she wants, what she's lost, and what she'll get if she achieves her goal. Then, I can still keep the script's important themes (Wolfie's unstoppable nature, her destruction, insanity, story's repercussions, etc, etc), but dull away the confusion and make it a simple story about an unstable boxer stopping at nothing to find the ones that left her for dead.

Sounds like you are well and truly on the right track with this rewrite, bro. Wolfie's story was definitely the strongest -- in terms of plot -- so it makes sense to focus solely on that.

Hit me up when the next draft is finished.

Good luck.

Quoted from nawazm11 Hey, Pia. Thanks for the comment. The writing is usually half/half, some people just hate it, others really enjoy it. It has come a long way! How far have you read the script? I'm going to try and get a second draft done this month if all goes to plan, would you mind waiting out until then? Unless of course, you've done a substantial amount of reading already, then I guess it's fine. After I finish with Bill's and Eric's script, I'll get onto whatever you want me to read. Although, in saying that, I'm still quite busy for a little while so it might take some time.

I'm only on page 25. Someone said they were interested in one of my features, so I've been scrambling to do a rewrite. Waiting with yours would workout fine with me.  

Hey Mo

Two things;

1) focus on wolfie...works for me

2) whilst I'm not saying your style is the same, you may want to check out script shadow today and the comments on the 72 script.

Cheers

Quoted from nawazm11 You're right, I really do struggle with cutting my scripts and it's a problem. Apologies if I came across as defensive in this post, I was simply trying to relay across my thoughts. I don't mean anything by it, and it's always nice to take it into account.

Hey Mo,

Nah, you didn't seem defensive. And honestly, I was worried that extensively breaking it down like I did might seem like an attack. In truth, breaking down dialogue is complicated and I felt if I didn't do it, my issue would sound too general to really tell you anything. I actually sat on the review for a day because I was worried it sounded overbearing.

It sounds like you're bringing some good focus to it, and I'm sure a lot of that other stuff will clear up on its own as a result.

Good luck man,
Eric

I was excited to read this; I'm a big sci-fi fan. But...

125 pages? That's 2 hours and 5 minutes of screen time. Edit: What I mean is, that's a lot of pages to read for a challenge. I love long movies and short, alike.

No "Fade in," but you do fade out at the end. Therefore, nothing in the script is visible on screen. We're looking at a pure black screen for 2 hours and 5 minutes. That might be okay for a 1930s radio drama, but this is a movie.

Bold slugs.

Never write transitions such as "Cut to" unless they are absolutely necessary and the film can't be made without them. Even so, we can't see the cut because you forgot to fade in.

I skimmed through, and it reads more like a novel. You have pages with barely anything on them. I know white space is a good thing, but not this much white space.

Therefore, I'm debating whether I should read this or not. You broke FIVE BIG rules.

So, for the moment: Incomplete out of 10.

Quoted from ChrisBodily 125 pages? That's 2 hours and 5 minutes of screen time.

Some scripts require this kind of page count.  It's not typical and not desired, but...some do require this and get away with it.

Just not sure if this is one of them, but don't judge a good writer's efforts on the page count...Mo knows what he's doing and this is also a rushed first draft.

Hey, all. A lot of stuff going on, very busy these past few weeks and for the ones ahead. Don't think I'll get to a rewrite any time soon unfortunately. Thanks for the feedback, I'm pretty set on what I want to do, and I think it might work.

Pia: That's fine, I might not be able to return a read to you for a while though as everything's pretty full on here this year for the next 2-3 months. Feel free to pm me though.

Bill: Had a look at that script, funnily enough, I thought the style wasn't even that bad -- and, what's more funny was that I saw half the comments thought it was spectacular, and the other half didn't know what to think.

Chris: Jeff jumped on it pretty early and I agree with him. Unfortunately, and please don't take this the wrong way, I disagree with every single thing you said. There are no rules, a script is simply what the writer makes it out to be, nothing more, nothing less. It seems like you've already made up your mind, which is fine and well -- but I don't think you'd enjoy the script if you were to continue, so there's no need. Although, in saying all of that, I suggest going into every script with an open mind rather than having it follow some prerequisite notions. Thanks for the comments.