Paladin :: SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board

This was a rough read. It was hard to follow, as are most Sci-Fi scripts with unique names. What made it harder were the many oddly-worded sentences that seemed to be missing words.

Also, the story ends abruptly as if it were unfinished. Gryym arrives, the Empress looks behind him, sees something and becomes tense. Andromeda sees it too. Then… that’s it. You don’t have FADE OUT or THE END so I think it’s unfinished. Either that or I must have missed something. I have no idea what they were looking at. I’ll need to read this again.

I know you wrote this with Scrivener for Windows, which is supposedly usable for writing screenplays, but the software let you down a bit. There are a couple of places where a piece of dialog became separated from the character who spoke it. It happens first between pages 3 & 4.

All characters including extras need to be in ALL CAPS when first introduced. This is even more important in a sci-fi piece of literature where character names are original. If it weren’t for you putting an age in parentheses after the character, I wouldn’t know if they were being introduced.

In reading scripts in general, especially when there are several characters being introduced, I often have to look back to see when they were introduced. Placing them in ALL CAPS makes them easier to find.

Page 1, you mention Oscars team. I think you meant Oscar’s team. Without the apostrophe, Oscars team is a team named Oscars. With it, it becomes a team commanded by Oscar. It’s not good to have a typo on page 1 in your first dialog of the script. It makes a bad first impression.

In the first action text on page 10, Etsibeth becomes Elizabeth (I think). If there is anyone named Elizabeth in the story, I didn’t see it.

Page 13, third paragraph down, it begins with “The SIZZLES into the fire…” I think you are missing a word there. My guess it’s water.

At the bottom of Page 20, we have a line of dialog, “…and we might a Paladin again…” I’m not sure but I think there is a word missing. It doesn’t read right.

On page 21, Gryym tries to keep a straight from amusement. I think you are missing “face”.

On the top of page 35, Lord Defense says, “… you’re going to pick some of the soldiers you’d like to you fight…”. I think you have too many words. I think there’s an extra “you” in that sentence.

Page 37, After the slug line INT. ROYAL VIEWING BOX, the action text lists “The Andromeda”. It seems like “Andromeda” is not only her name but also her title. It reads weird.

In closing, you have created a nice little universe here. You have a bit of cleanup to do. Also, I think you need to finish this story. That’s the way it seemed to me. It’s possible Scrivener messed you up when creating the PDF. Also, you need to keep an eye out for widow/orphan situations. You have situations where characters are separated from their dialog. Also, there are placed where dialog continues on the next page. Normally you put (MORE) at the bottom of the page and the character with (CONTINUED) at the top of the next page so we know it’s all together. I don’t know if there is a setting for this in Scrivener of if this is something that the software won’t handle automatically.