I Love You by Kenzie - Short, Sci Fi, Fantasy - A devoted husband and father, torn between duty and family, finds himself alone and adrift in space, grappling with the weight of his choices as he hurtles toward an inevitable collision with the sun. 12 pages - pdf format

New writer interested in feedback on this work, please be nice

This read well. The story was touching. I shared the character’s outrage over James being forced to perform a long mission. I could have used a little more depth in the story about past marriage problems or why the ship was headed for the Sun. I could only assume that there were many more arguments and something went wrong with the spaceship. The dialog was strong enough to make it acceptable but it still would have helped.

I do have a few comments and suggestions. First, this needs to be proofread better. There are a lot of typos, capitalization issues and missing words throughout. There is a typo in your first action line.

The next biggest issue involves flashbacks. They need to be made clearer. Putting “FLASHBACK” at the end of your scene header is not quite the right way. It will look a little amateurish to a producer. What I would do is put “He has a flashback” at the end of the preceding action text followed by the heading “BEGIN FLASHBACK”. Then I would put the next scene header.

I use the middle of page 1 as an example:

James reaches for his phone, scrolls through old photos of his family. This triggers a flashback.

FLASHBACK BEGINS

INT. JAMES’ HOME – KITCHEN – DAY

At the end of the flashback I would use the header “END FLASHBACK” or “FLASHBACK ENDS”. Some people use “RETURN TO SCENE” which in this case, would bring us back to the spaceship. In quite a few places I got lost in that I wasn’t sure when the flashback ended or if it ended. I also wasn’t sure if the flashback I was in was an extension of the flashback I just read. I see you have camera direction on the right but that doesn’t actually end a flashback. You can cut to another piece of the same flashback, another point of view or something that happens simultaneously.

Also on this page, you mention that the kitchen is alive with the sound of sizzling bacon and the aroma of fresh brewed coffee. Think about it. How do you film an aroma? You could film a character sniff, smile and then say, “Hmmmm. Fresh brewed coffee.” I’m sure you could do better than my suggestion but you get the idea. The same thing with the ending. He relives all the happy moments of his life and only the happy moments. That’s a great way to end a novel or short story. A screenplay is an instruction manual on how to film a movie. You need to show him reliving his happy moments, perhaps with a long montage.

Another problem I see is that you need to use active verbs and not passive verbs. In short, it means to avoid using verbs that end in “ing”. Also, you should avoid mentioning the same location as the scene heading. This happens on page 2 where the scene heading is: INT. NASA HEADQUARTERS – JAMES’ OFFICE – DAY. The first action line is: James sits at his cluttered desk in his office. We’re already in his office. You only need to tell us that he sits at his cluttered desk. For the sentence after that I would suggest: Stacks of paperwork surround him as monitors display various data streams.

I hope you find my suggestions useful. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me.