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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    Unproduced Screenplay Discussion    Series  ›  Scratch, The First Engagement: Won't You Guess... Moderators: bert
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Don
Posted: March 14th, 2010, 11:26am Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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Scratch, The First Engagement: Won't You Guess My Name? by Dave Perry - Short, Drama - Amidst his bouts with alcoholism, The Man begins losing several hours of every night from the time he leaves the bar to the time he falls asleep in his bed. During this time, somewhere between dreams and reality, The Man sits in the all-too-familiar bar, in near darkness, talking to The Devil about sociological manipulation and how The Man got to the point of isolation, obscurity, and disorientation. 28 pages - pdf, format


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usaking
Posted: March 17th, 2010, 8:59am Report to Moderator
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Oh boy.... There are many problems here, but I guess I will have to start with the most obvious.

The title - Okay, this is probably just me, but I believe one of the most important things in a script is the title. Abad title could lead to a script not being as good as it could have been. Your title "Scratch, The First Engagement: Won't You Guess My Name?" is really bad. It's too long, and it doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Logline - Way too long. I see exactly what you did, though. You tried to play it smart and make your logline seem short with two sentences by putting in commas in every sentence. Very amusing, but not good. It has to be shortened.

Action lines - This is a problem I used to have as well, so don't feel bad about it. Your action lines are way too long. They should only be about 4-5 lines. What I did to "avoid" more than 5 lines is simply cut bits into small paragraphs. So, this would make them not too long, plus people could easily read the lines.

Dialogue - I am someone who writes a lot of dialogue in my stories. I believe that dialogue is much more important than actions. Unfortunately, you seem to love a lot of dialogue and a lot of action. At first, the dialogue is short and nice, but after pg. 6, you seem to just let your characters say whatever they need to in paragrah format. It needs to be cut down, at least a little. Oh my, I just read from pg. 6 - pg. 15. It is nothing except dialogue!!!!

Read the above info I gave to you. I think you see what the problem is, and I see it to. You apparently really love to write long stuff. I don't know if it is a habit, or what, but you clearly love writing long chunks of words. So, my advice to you is to try and write shorter in the above topics. The formatting is fine. No need to worry about that. Just write shorter sentences.
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Vladimir Jazz
Posted: March 17th, 2010, 1:29pm Report to Moderator
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Thanks for the read and review, usaking.

The title was a bit tricky, because this is supposed to be a script for an anime series, and anime does something a bit different. Like our cartoons, they have a series name and episode titles. But what many of them also do is give their episodes designations. What I mean by this is, as an example, Cowboy Bebop numbers each episode as a "Session." So the first episode would be "Cowboy Bebop, Session One: Asteroid Blues."

For some reason, however, SimplyScripts saw it to be more of a short than a series.

I wasn't trying to be tricky with the logline, I'd seen fairly long ones before, but I can certainly work at cutting it down.

With the action lines, I know exactly what you mean. I've read a few more scripts, and I think I know how to cut them up a little. The problem is that the series is extremely somber. It's a very intense, dramatic series where the only major dialogue is between The Man and The Devil. Other than that, the focus is on The Man's reaction to his world when he's alone or being voyeuristic. This dictates a great deal of action. You suggest to simply break up the large action paragraphs into smaller ones?

The dialogue. Fixing this will be a little more difficult, because of the setting. The cornerstone of the series is the conversation between The Man and The Devil. These can be long, but they contain a great deal of information. But the setting for these conversations is in a bar that's so dark, only a few feet surrounding the two characters and their section of the bar can be seen. What I think may help, in this case, is to use some symbolistic movement and actions while they talk.

I do feel as though I gave up too much of The Devil's ideas in this, the first script. Perhaps focusing on a few smaller parts of his idealisms in each episode would help cut the dialiogue down, and give each episode their main theme.

Thanks again for the review, I'd be curious to see what you thought about the story.


Petty Torture Productions: Artwork and Scripts for Petty Torture cartoon and anime series concepts.

http://pettytortureproductions.ning.com/
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bert
Posted: March 17th, 2010, 2:10pm Report to Moderator
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Quoted from Vladimir Jazz

For some reason, however, SimplyScripts saw it to be more of a short than a series.


Don never second-guesses the author, and just puts the script where you tell him to.

Maybe you accidentally entered the wrong category?  Or maybe just assumed that Don would recognize it as a series?

Anyway, not a big deal.  I can move it to series if you want.  Drop me a note and let me know.


Hey, it's my tiny, little IMDb!
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jackx
Posted: March 18th, 2010, 1:09pm Report to Moderator
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Thanks again for the read of Unpowered.
Some notes on this:

first line, "the moonlight cast shadows"  s/b casts
Pretty sure specific songs are disouraged in spec scripts.
Also you're very specific about the setup of the bar.  From your website I'm guessing you've actually drawn a bunch of this, but even so, if its not important to the story that there are two levels, etc,  might want to be a bit more general.  Concentrate on the atmosphere.
Also your giant blocks of text are strongly discouraged.
On the same note, do we need to know every item in the fridge?  This reads like a novel, not a script.  Just mention the pizza since it comes back later.
How do we know the young man at the bar is on his third beer?
Also those people should be capped when first introduced.  And it's a bit confusing how no one has a name, and are only described as young man, man, middle aged man, etc.  But I guess that wouldn't be a problem in the actual filmed version.
How do we know the mans vision is blurred?  And later how do we know he's nauseous?
You still tell us exactly how many and what type of people are in the bar, and it has yet to be important that I can see.
For the devils dialogue when you break it to have the bar move I think it would look a lot better to do  "then...    ...I'll take the bar to you."  Rather than use a comma like now, just because having the lowercase letter start a paragraph looks pretty bad, imo.

Kinda overwrought dialogue coming out of the drunk man.
supposedly the man and creature are having a dialogue, but in several cases it just sounds like the man is reinforcing the creatures points, like they're both the same person.  Which, of course, they are in a way, but in the surface of the script it comes across awkwardly.
Also all this dialogue is pretty dense, especially considering there was no dialogue at all up until that point.

At page 11, I'm asking myself what's at stake here.  Not to sound trite, but basically this is just an overly verbose exposition on your beliefs about religion/politics/etc.  Within the story, there's no actual story.  Meaning the Man is in no danger of losing his soul or anything, the creature doesn't seem to have any particular goal other than talking the mans ear off.  And densely worded or not, there's nothing groundbreaking about the discussion.

THE CREATURE
Once a society becomes dependent on
factual information that it narrows
the areas of discovery, one must
again create doubt in order to keep
man on this track to narrow-minded
free thinking.
THE MAN
Now, when you say that, I assume
you mean that in order to create a
moldable society, one must gain
control of it's potential
intelligence, and so the goal is to
keep man from finding other trees
of information to pool from.

see here's an example where the man is basically parroting/expounding on the creatures dialogue.  A) it doesn't sound like any extremely drunk guy I've met   B)the man doesn't come across as a character, more as a foil to the creatures point.  [kinda like the socratic stories where the stupid pupil asks the stupid question which sets socrates up to look smart.  Which is fine for Socrates, but not so good when the stupid pupil is your main character]

you're own god doomed you...    s/b your
isn't satan a more classic term than the devil?  
And not sure I mentioned it yet, but there are HUGE blocks of dialogue, and since the devil moved the bar, I'm don't think there's been a single line of action.  Visually this will be extremely boring, which wont be helped by the density of the dialogue.
Also I don't think you need to be coy about just calling the creature the devil the whole time.  

p18ish.  That's a whole lot of deep conversation to be thrown around by random bar people.
Not sure you need a wryly saying 'existential', especially considering the rest of the dialogue flying around.
more typos throughout, they're for their several times, etc.
Have you thought about having the bartender morph into the devil, rather than just have him standing there the whole time?

In your comments you say something about watching the man when he's being voyeuristic.  I didn't see any of this, with the possible exception of watching the old couple, and listening to the god dialogue a few lines later.  A lot more of this would be nice.

I'm generally of the belief that every story has a particular medium, or mediums that its suited to.  That's why making books into movies or vice versa usually doesn't work out well.  To me the story you have here is not a TV show, or a movie.  It's too wordy and too visually boring.  
I've checked out your drawings, (which are pretty badass by the way)  and they look great as a still frame.  And if that was the style of the anime it might even be cool to watch the man shave, walk around the bar and drink, etc.  But then you're going to have him sit and talk to a creature for 15 solid minutes?  With no action at all?
That isn't a movie, that's a book.  In fact, I'm pretty sure its called the Screw Tape Letters, by CS Lewis.

And when the man asks why the devils talking to him, the audience is asking the same thing.  Why?  Because he has some spark?  What?  
The point I'm trying to make, is there is no narrative momentum, other than whatever interest you generate in your philosophical musings.  And philosophical musings do not make an anime series.

All the bad aside, there obviously is a lot of thought put into this, and it's certainly a fascinating idea, if not entirely original.  I think you just need to cut the amount of ideas in half, and double the amount of action.
Haha, but of course you've read some of my stuff, so that might be expected.
In any case, well done getting this far, and good luck fixing it up.


Mine:
HARD CASE
            (65 Pages) Stealing the case is just the beginning...

APU
            (80 pages) A city where superheroes are murderers and villains walk through walls...
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Vladimir Jazz
Posted: March 18th, 2010, 1:37pm Report to Moderator
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Now that was a helpful review.

I've felt all of the issues you've presented at one point or another, so it really helps for someone else to point them all out at once and force me to realize that they really are important issues to address.

The story does pick up, and there is something major at stake. Apparently I wasn't able to get it across very well. What's at stake are the souls of the people, specifically the soul of a girl who's presence was danced around in this script. The problem is trying to stretch The Devil's plan out over a certain period of time, because The Man needs time to realize what's really happening. It's something no one would believe, and something those that do don't fully understand.

What Scratch is supposed to do is reveal The Devil's character and capabilities, or lack there-of. The Man is important because The Devil sees too much of himself in The Man. What The Devil isn't able to admit is that the entire reason he's chosen The Man is because he has to prove to himself that who he is can be entirely separated from God's creation. The Man begins pulling out of his depression because The Devil's presence makes him realize, much to his fright, that he has a lot in common with The Devil.

I will definitely get this one cleaned up a little, and try to blend the action and dialogue a bit more favorably. There are a couple other characters yet to be revealed that really help to show what's happening, and answer several questions like "what's at stake" and "How did The Devil find The Man?"

Thanks again for the review, as it appears, I need to rethink how to go about the dialogue between The Devil and The Man. I really appreciate the review of the story, as well.


Petty Torture Productions: Artwork and Scripts for Petty Torture cartoon and anime series concepts.

http://pettytortureproductions.ning.com/
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