Africa by Stephen Hewitt - RomCom - An actors life. 94 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Wow.

It's kind of impressive to get so many things wrong between the title page and the end of page 1.

It's almost as if you got your hands on Final Draft, burned the manual, threw caution to the wind... (actually you strapped caution to a poorly made rocket and lit that sucker on fire), and ran with it.

I applaud your tenacity, and technically you have a finished feature, so... congratulations...?

A few notes as I go:

• Title Page. Unless the title of your story is actually Title and your name is actually "Author's Name", you need to click on the title page icon and enter the information for your script.
  
• Page 1. You should have FADE IN: at the top left on the first page.
  
• Page 1. Aston Martin, not Austin Martin.
  
• Page 1. Maserati, not masaratti.
  
• Page 1. Four, not for.
  
• Page... actually they're all on page 1 because I didn't make it past the first page.
  
• drapes, not drape's.
  
• You need to use proper punctuation. You're missing periods.
  
• Try not to use parentheticals () unless it's absolutely necessary. More than half of your page is taken up with these.
  
• You have the character's name kara in parenthesis. That's wrong.
  
• You have complete lines of action in parenthesis. That's wrong.
  

Quoted Text every morning should be started like this babe. What are your movements for the day babe ?

I feel like these 2 lines sum up why you're not getting any comments on your script.

"What are your movements"? Does she have bowel issues?

I'm guessing English isn't your primary language or you're using AI to write your script.
Either way, I had to stop reading at this point.
I heard Popeye's voice in my head and had to heed his wisdom.

Read a few books on screenplay format.
Brush up on proper grammar.
Then give this a rewrite and you might have more luck getting some reviews.

Good luck!

Nomad's comments above may seem a little cold, but unfortunately, they're for the most part spot on.

The only thing I disagree with is that you are using Fade In and not Final Draft. That is an excellent software purchase and I commend you for it. Many people start writing in MS WORD and their problems with format start with that. I cannot emphasize enough the hurdle you jumped by starting out with software designed for writing scripts.

To edit the title page, type CTRL-ALT-T. You’ll see what we’re talking about. You can edit the page from there.

As for the mechanics in format, I would like to provide some clarification.

Your first line of dialog comes from Ross. You follow with a parenthetical: (soft loving voice). After that, you have a blank line. The dialog should start in the following line. That’s where Fade-In put it. If there was supposed to be a gap, the software would give that to you. You’ll notice that it does it with new scene headings. You don’t have to add line breaks. Fade-In formats your line spacing appropriately.

I have trouble with spelling. When I write, I keep a browser open to Bing. Anytime I am not sure of a spelling for a name or anything else, I check it on Bing or an online dictionary. I also keep a thesaurus open. That way I don’t use the same word for repetitive action. It’s easy to fall into the trap where a character walks here, walks there, walks out the door, etc. You need to break things up so that they Walk here, stomps away, strolls down the sidewalk, march into the boss’s office, etc.

I’ll provide an example of proper formatting of the bottom of page 2:

                         MAID 2
          Ma’am, your coffee and fruit is out
          on the table ready for you.

Maid 2 leaves the room.

                         KARA
          Thank you.

A cute little dog jumps up on the bed.  She cuddles it.

                         KARA (Cont’d)  ---the software will place the (Cont’d) for you
          Oh good morning beautiful girl oh so
          happy to see you.

Kara slides out of bed wearing a stunning black night gown. She looks absolutely sexy.
The dog jumps down off the bed.

Maid 1 holds a black silk brunch coat and slippers.

You’ll notice that I ditched the “and talks a bit of baby babble”.  That kind of non-descript action may work in a novel but a script needs to be more concise. You need to direct the actor as to what to say and do unless you want them to improvise. It’s the equivalent of writing music with the instruction, “Play whatever notes you want for this part, just make it jazzy.” Could you imagine handing that to a middle school stage band?

Also you’ll notice I re-phrased your action so that verbs do not end in “ing”. It’s not an absolute rule but pretty close to it. I kept “wearing” because it’s the second verb in the sentence. Sometimes it can’t be avoided. In most cases, you can re-wordi the sentence. For example, “He dances wearing a hat” can be reworded to “He dances with a hat on his head.”

More obvious situations include: “He is sitting at a table.” becomes  “He sits at a table.” and “A wall is standing in front of him.” should be “A wall stands before him.”

Try not to use "then" so much. If you read the sentence without the "then", you'll find it still makes sense..

As far as dialog is concerned, say it out loud as you review it. If it sounds odd, it is. Would you call someone "Babe" in consecutive sentences? I wouldn't if I wanted to go out on a second date. On the other hand, a quirky character would have awkward speech patterns. A character may also have dialog that is deliberately awkward as if to make fun of someone. Otherwise, if you don't speak that way, your character shouldn't as well.

For a perfect example of bad dialog, I recommend reading "The Room" by Tommy Wiseau. In fact, it breaks a whole bunch of rules from hysterically bad dialog, "I'm a psychologist so that make me an expert.", bad format with all action text in ALL CAPS and dialog with the same margins as action text, to changing into an anime vampire movie on page 34 for a scene. I recommend that anybody serious about writing scripts read it as an example of what NOT to do. I consider Tommy Wiseau to be a folk hero but seriously, that script is BAD. You can find it on this site in the MOVIE SCRIPTS section under R.

I’ll continue to read this and if I think of or come across anything else, Ill comment on it. I think you have enough to digest for now. The good news is that with the software you are using, you can change some of your parentheticals into action text with a mouse click and edit the changes from there.

Since somebody else wrote “Good luck!”, I guess I’ll say: Get well soon?

I don't want to jump on the train of hypercritical takes here, so I'm going to say that everything Nomad and D.A said is technically true in terms of the flaws on display here.

But don't be discouraged - from my scan of the first ten or so pages, the most obvious and basic mistakes here are incredibly easy to fix. Everybody's talking about Fade-in/Final Draft but I'm not sure you're using either, this looks like it was written in a word processor. You can't really do that in 2023; because of how ubiquitous screenwriting software is, imperfections with margins, titles, etc are not really excusable anymore. Even if your structure, grammar, dialogue, and general writing had been perfect, these flaws will mean that no one important is going to take your script very seriously, rightly or wrongly.

So, step by step, here's how to get the script to a place where the feedback you get isn't just going to be "this looks wrong".

(before starting the steps, read a bunch of contemporary feature scripts. Even better, read good UNPRODUCED scripts to understand the expectations of a spec writer - look up recent Blacklist winners for example).

1. Take everything you've written so far and transpose it into a software like Final Draft. Final Draft is expensive, and there are cheap/free options - WriterSolo and WriterDuet have free options and produce perfectly fine formatting.

2. Read everything aloud and fix what sounds wrong. Dialogue, actions, scene descriptions - everything. There's basic word issues on every page and line that need amending.

(2.1 - If the issue is English being your second language, write it in your first language. You're not trying to get the script produced or even get it in competitions, or as a calling ard, just yet - you're just trying to write something you can be sure is as best as possible. For that reason, it doesn't need to be in English. You can get feedback from other people who speak your first language.

2.2 - If English IS your first language, well, there's free literacy, grammar, prose, language lessons available online or on YouTube etc. You're asking yourself basic questions about the function and form of a sentence, and there's answers available. While you're doing this, read books or long-form writing to get comfortable with the written word. This sounds mean, like I'm implying you're not literate, but it's just a fact at the moment that your writing reads like around the language capacity of a below-average 8-13 year old. Graduate to progressively more dense and difficult works to read over time, as you get more confident).

3 - Now, you have a script that is properly formatted and in standard, passable English (or another language). You can resubmit it for FREE feedback on places like simplyscripts or reddit, but expect feedback to be highly critical, because you haven't yet worked on structure, pacing, characters, dialogue etc. Use this critical feedback to ask yourself questions about each scene. If someone gives you feedback you don't understand, ask questions to make the feedback more actionable.

DO NOT PAY FOR ANY KIND OF COVERAGE OR FEEDBACK AT THIS POINT

4 - Now you're writing a new draft. This second draft is ready for another round of (free) feedback.

5- While all of this is happening, you're still reading lots of written stuff (scripts and prose) to get more comfortable. Practice writing - not just scripts, short stories, essays, a diary.

6 - Repeat step 4 multiple times. You'll be ready to judge when the script has reached a point where it's something you can proudly display to everyone.

Okay, I finished it. AlsoBen’s comments became better advice the more I read. Also, I absolutely don’t want you to be discouraged. You made an investment in script writing software. Like AlsoBen said, DON’’T pay for feedback. We're here.

That said, I would like to mention a few things I liked.

On page 15 you describe Charlie as “looking devastated like a little kid”. I think that description set the mood nicely. I have had days like that, I really felt for the guy.

On page 27, you mention a wine called “1969 Chateau la Piss”. I didn’t miss the little joke there. Nice touch.

On page 30, the whole plane yells “NO!” to her desire to sleep again. They are really tired of her snoring.

You had a lot of “boob jokes” spread throughout. They can get a little tiring but I liked them anyway. I think I’m stuck as a college kid.

On page 39 Kristina had the line, “When in Africa, do an African.” I don’t know if this was deliberate but it was funny anyway.

I did find a few more pointers to give. I don’t mean to pile on but these are things that can be fixed easily in addition to the needed edits already mentioned.

There are stray exclamation points scattered throughout. This leads me to believe that you wrote this in another software package and imported it into Fade-In. This also may be why you are missing so many periods. That’s not a problem. You just have a lot of cleanup to do. Fade-In is an excellent software package. These things happen. Don't think you bought buggy software.

For the spelling mistakes mentioned by Nomad above, you can do a search and replace by typing CTRL-SHIFT-F.

On page 20 and page 80 you break the rule of “Show, don’t tell”. On page 20, Kara’s room smells bad. You can’t film a smell. However, the assistant can sniff and react with a cringe. That can be filmed. On page 80 you mention humidity. You can’t quite film humidity easily but it would be better to mention steam or sweat, and characters looking wilted.

You have a number of places where dialog text is formatted as something other than dialog. For instance, Guide #1’s dialog is formatted as action on page 59. On page 47 Kara’s dialog is formatted as character.

As the story moves along, the dialog seems a bit less clumsy but it may due to the African dialects. However, on page 59 Guide #1 introduces himself as “Hello, I’m Guide #1!” I think you should give Guide #1 & Guide #2 better names. Also, later on in the story they change to Guide 1 and Guide 2. It’s a nitpicky thing but I think you will do yourself a favor giving them memorable names.

While I liked the happy ending, a lot of things seemed to happen over time and in rapid succession. We go from a rescue helicopter landing to a red carpet at an awards ceremony and back to Africa. Obviously, from the quick descriptions, several months has passed. You need slug lines (scene headings in Fade-In) here.

I liked the happy ending. I felt bad for Ross but he had it coming.