Sociosphere by Kyle - Drama - The High Council, the rule makers of a dystopian society, is looking for a fifth member. A laconic, idealistic spy plans to infiltrate the Council while his friend-turned-enemy joins an underground faction bent on ruining the Councillors. Set in a modern day high school. 109 pages - pdf, format

Kyle,

Your logline should be re-written. Hit info on your t.v.remote and look at some of those.

I would put a comma after HIGH in your opening slug, just for clarity. Not sure if a hallway can be outside. What's this mention of a boat in the opening? Is this a comedy?

People still use dark rooms in the digital age? People are commenting on photos hanging in this dark room? I'm kinda confused.
The trying too hard photo teach? You are cheating with your intros.

Pg. 4 main square. You may want to start with a montage. You are firing a lot of intros at us in the first ten. I'm getting confused. Is this a comedy? Did I already ask?

15 in and I have to say... this is the most depressing school imaginable. Score one for you. No wonder why society is FUBAR.

Your writing is good. I would consider if this story is worth telling. Who is the target audience?

A better title would be: Dysfunctional Sociosphere. Weird stuff.

I'm gonna skip around on this a bit.

Tony

Thanks Tony. You're right about too many character intros. I'll see if I can move them to later scenes to not clog it up early on.  

I'm glad you called it depressing. My idea is to give hints of a comedy, but subvert that as it becomes more depressingly fake, hateful, and confusing.

Self-Bump!
Rewrote the ENDING to be less edgy.
Rewrote the beginning (less character intros, added more action, made two main characters more different).

My main concern now is that the protag gets what he thinks he wants early on, only to realize it's not really what he wants nor does it help him. My question is if the story loses it's momentum at that point or not.

Hey Gecko, it almost feels as if you wrote this script in some kind of a code language.  Both action lines and dialogues are so stripped of any explanations and connectors that I feel completely lost.  Of course me being a foreigner doesn’t help, ‘normal’ person probably wouldn’t struggle as much.

Page 1 – ‘boy’s bathroom’ should be ‘boys or boys’ bathroom’, am I right?

BARK BARK? Who’s barking? A mentally challenged pupil? Ah, i see, one paragraph later, it’s a doggie.

Page 2 - INT. BATHROOM OF PISS – interesting, but made me pause too much. I’d use TOILETS or something normal.

Page 4 – When Photo Teach enters the dark room, what’s his reaction? Intimidated? Angry? Doesn’t he care about the students who shouldn’t be in there? And what’s their reaction? Do they flinch a bit when Photo Teach enters?

‘Wassup, guys?’ I’m really not sure about things like this. It spices things up, but on the other hand, for a nanosecond my brain thought Wassup was perhaps a name of a person, or another dog. I think it’s more distractive than productive.

All these name like FATSO, FAT GANG, THE TURBO NERDS – I find them too derogatory and they add to the hostile feel which so far dominates your script.

Page 9 – ‘Mex squeezes his frog to death’. Not sure it’s possible. From my experience, it’s almost impossible to even hold a frog as they are extremely slimy creatures and kinda slide their way out between your fingers. I would personally omit the whole matter with the frogs, it’s just cruel and nothing else.

‘The whispers grow louder: PSS PSS PSS PSS.’ I would omit PSS...

Page 10 – Again, I would give your character FREAK some normal name. Why does he have yellow eyes? Liver problems? Or is it just yellow paint?

Page 17 – ‘Screams, helicopters rotors, bullets, and explosions.’ What are you on about here?

I wish I could write interesting sentences like you can, but so far I’ve found this script disturbing. All characters seem to be emotionally impaired. Also, there’s too many characters for my brain to handle. Despite all this, I’m intrigued and want to know where this all is heading. I’m hoping to be back to read the whole script. Or, if you want me to shut up, just say so.
Marcela

thanks Marcela. I agree with a bunch of that and will fix it and try to make it clearer. Also, emotionally impaired is the exact right phrase, I'm glad it came across as so.

Hey Gecko, I've read the whole script now. Well, I skipped some pages that I wasn't able to digest, for example Anita's long dialogues on pages 84-85. Have I missed any important information on those pages?

The whole script is really bizarre, which actually makes it really interesting. I still don't get why all the characters are so weird, what had happened to them?

I feel it should be shorter, the second half seemed to drag on and repeat. Overall, the whole script left me slightly depressed. Can't you have two kinds of people in your script? One kind would be the weirdos, the other would be kinda nice?

I also thought Uno-Hoo came on scene too late. I wasn't expecting anybody important appearing by then. As I said before, there's too many characters involved, which makes it messy.

Just a minor thing - Cathy's farts don't fit into the murky bizarre atmosphere at all!

Sorry I can't come up with anything more constructive. I may give it another read!

Yeah I see what you mean. I wouldn't say "something happened to them," just that they're going through puberty and haven't learned who they are or how to interact with people. I guess that's what I was trying to do with Petris. He at first rejects any kind of human emotion, and slowly learns to open up to others.
You're probably right that it does need at least one "kind" character, and I'll probably make the father one.
And I agree it could be shorter, so thank you very much for this perspective! Looking back now, it does feel all over the place.