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Betty and the Burglar by Rodrigo Baumgartner Ayres - Short, Drama - A burglar breaks into an apartment and ends up confronting a most unusual resident. 17 pages - pdf, format
I think it is a good premise riddled with problems that, if fixed, could probably leave a decent story.
You have one scene heading for a 16 page script, that is definitely not in one location. The scene heading does state that, but you need to break it up. This is not right:
INT. LIVING ROOM (KITCHEN / BEDROOM) - STORMY NIGHT
Either do a new full or mini slug when you change between rooms. Also Stormy night should just be NIGHT. It would be better to set up that it is a stormy night in your action.
No idea what this is:
(B Roll: clock, empty picture frames)
This is unfilmable. You need to portray this to the reader/viewer somehow. Writing it like this does not work:
Betty now thinks it is two years earlier. In her mind Michael is now twenty years old. She thinks she is forty eight years old herself.
There are grammatical errors and passive writing throughout.
Lots of over writing, you get very specific for things that don’t need to be specific, like:
“He accidently knocks over an old guitar with only 2 strings producing a loud noise.”
How is it going to affect your story if the guitar has 2, 3 or 6 strings. Descriptions are fine when they are truly needed and add to the story.
I do think there is a story here, just needs work.
I was trying to figure out what you were trying to get at when you wrote "Betty now thinks it's two years earlier". Was this a flashback? I was confused when I read that, because I thought that it was a flashback, but I didn't see anywhere in the script where you came back to present time.
Just like Warren said, I think there could be a good story here but it needs to be cleaned up. Take the advice he has given you, it's sound advice.
Thank you. The explanations in bold are the actual reactions that the loud noise caused on her, and I was wondering if I should keep them or just the quick: 'the loud noise causes a reaction in Betty'. Did you notice that I'm telling her life backwards? Every time there is a loud noise she flips and in her mind she goes back in time. First she goes back to the moment she kicked her son Michael out of the house which cause him to go to war and die. And then she goes back to when he was still a young teen and his father (her husband) had just abandoned them, which triggers the whole story.