Bug Out by Adam Nadworniak - Short, Horror - Without giving away too much of the plot the storyline is pretty much two old friends meet at a bar after six years of not seeing each other and how it can go from good times to one horrific moment really fast.  11 pages - pdf, format

LOTS of typos in this. Not sure about the formatting either. It randomly switches to bold font. My suggestion is to read some polished scripts before working on a rewrite.

James,

With proper formatting in place this would be a fraction of the page count.  There’s plenty of free downloadable software available (Celtex, Trelby amongst others) they’re easy to use and help you get a feel for how the page should look.  Unfortunately, until you’ve taken the time to get basic screenplay format and grammar in place it’ll be tricky for anyone to get into the actual story.

A few suggestions looking at the first paragraph alone to give you an idea:

'We the bar is fairly quiet bar except for the song “Secret Agent Man” playing on the jukebox by ‘Johnny Rivers playing. We open to reveal a lonely man sitting at a table at a bar all by himself. This is LEONARD slightly gray haired from ages 35- 55 and he seems cool and cool and collected reading the local bar with his horn rimmed eye glasses on, suddenly a vice calls out.'

Aside from the typos there’s a lot of redundant wording here.

There’s no need to tell us ‘We open…’ it’s already implied.

Better to be specific with ages.  35-55 is way too broad and doesn't give the reader much to go on.  

You’ve already established the location with the scene header so there's no need to tell us Leonard is sat at a table in a bar.

‘He seems cool and cool and collected’ - clunky and pretty much the same thing.  What is he doing aside from sitting at a bar that shows us this?  Better to reveal these traits through his actions rather than simply tell us.

No need for ‘suddenly a voice…’

The whole opener could be:

INT. BAR - NIGHT

Music plays from a jukebox.

LEONARD, late 30s, greying, glasses, nurses a drink at the bar.

                               MIKE (O.S.)
               Seriously… etc.

Or something along these lines.  Think about keeping it simple and visual.  

IMO, if you’re hoping to see something produced then it’s better to leave specific songs out and let the film-maker worry about the soundtrack.

There's no end of resources out there and this is a good site to learn.  Hope this helps.

Steve

Sorry but this need a lot of work. It’s nowhere near the mark.

Best advice, read a lot more scripts. You can access hundreds on this site. Also read a few articles on formatting. Give this a rewrite and take it from there.

Best of luck.

The writer cited is Adam Naworniak, but the script says "James Naworniak". Is this the same person?

Anyways I found this script hard to comprehend. Caution SPOILERS.






I didn't understand why Leonard wouldn't answer Mike's questions. If he was going to kill Mike anyway, at least tell him where he has been.

For me without motivation or cause, every event just seemed random and out of place. Neither Mike nor Leonard could keep a straight thought in their head. Maybe it was the booze talking, IDK. Seriously though I need more information to understand the subtext.

The dialogue was interesting. You could clearly interpret their dialect as regional, maybe even rural.

I think you need to work out the back story some more. The turning point at the end, would have been interesting had I understood why Leonard wanted to kill Mike in the first place.

Might sound harsh but I stopped right after the first "sentence". This needs so much work... it's beyond me how anyone can put something like that out....

Even if you're not a native speaker, how could you NOT notice that the sentences don't make any sense? Holy moly...

Some notes.

The first paragraph is wrong.  Mistakes, poor writing, bad descriptions.  How many people will read past it?

I kept reading.

The dialogue doesn't do much for me.  

The ending might work if you had given it a slightly better setup.  Say Mike calls him Leonard in front of a lot of guys who think his name is 'Sam'.  That would make things awkward.  

But it won't make up for the formatting and poor English.  Read some good scripts and get some good software.  That should help.

Best
Richard