The Error by Jorden Marc Walker - Short, Sci Fi, Fantasy - A shy young man seeks help from a bartender, but the world freezes around him, prompting a mysterious entity to give him an earth-shattering ultimatum. 8 pages - pdf format

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

This was a nice quick read. The story has an interesting premise. I liked the part where when the Program spoke, all of the characters spoke in unison as its voice.  That's how I interpreted it, anyway.

It says above that you are a new writer. This doesn't read that way. This looks quite professional. I suspect that you have been reading many scripts or this is not your first project. Also, I know you used Final Draft.  That’s a serious chunk of change for someone new. You’re committed. I’m impressed.

I do have a few of suggestions, all from page 7.

After Frank hands Lucy his phone, Lucy types in her phone number. Then you have "handing Frank his phone back" as a parenthetical in her next dialog. I know you are visualizing this as her speaking as she hands back his phone. It makes the writing a little odd. The reason is that it makes the parenthetical a little long. My suggestion is to change the previous action text to:

She types in her phone number, hands back the phone. Then her dialog of "Call me tomorrow, okay?" can be free of the long parenthetical. It doesn’t change the story as long as she gives back the phone. I only suggest it because I loathe multi-line parentheticals. Parentheticals  should be short and be used only when needed to keep something from being misunderstood.

After that, "she gets started on making another". I looked around to what she was making another of. I think something got lost between edits.

Also, it would be cleaner if "she starts to make another" or better yet, "she makes another"...   My point being that you should avoid using verbs that end in "ing". I think you know that since it's practically the only place I see this mistake.

After that, there is a large gap and then there’s what seems like a new scene out of nowhere. I know what’s going on but you need a new slug line to tell us that you moved the camera. Either that, if Big Beard and Red Hat are at the bar and in the scene with Frank and Lucy, albeit in the background, they need to be introduced then. They just can’t start talking out of nowhere.

I would write it as:

ELSEWHERE AT THE BAR

BIG BEARD (brief description) and RED HAT  (brief description) sit side-by-side, engaged in conversation.  Big Beard is animated while Red Hat acts disinterested and drinks his beer.

Big Beard says his dialog about simulation and Red Hat says his “Okay” without any parentheticals.

That’s all I have for comments. Anything more is above my pay grade and will need to come from someone with more experience.