The In-Between by Martin Javens - Short, Sci Fi, Fantasy - When a young woman plagued by mysterious whisperings discovers a surreal world known as The In-Between, she must navigate a dangerous clash between Earth and a sinister parallel dimension to uncover the truth about her missing mother and her own enigmatic destiny. 25 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hello, I have to read and review a script for a class.  I can not find any.  Must be a button I'm not finding?

Just click on the bolded script title next to the writer's name.

You might like to post your review here for the writer as well.

Thank you, LC.  I just finally had figured it out . Will do!

Review, I do not know yet how these things are supposed to be formatted.  Some spelling errors, lots of sentences that are questions in the dialogue that are formatted with periods, so many that I thought maybe that's what you're supposed to do but then intermixed are a bunch of question marks so that's confusing.

There was a line that says, "Where the unexplained remains unexplained" just feels a bit off but what do I know?

a homeless man knowing the future is so used in these kind of things where something mysterious is in the hero's head.  Maybe consider a better way to do that other than another homeless person knowing things.  

It would be fun to see how they travel back to earth.

Do they ever visit earth?  At one point the in between people (Do they have a name?) made it seem like they never leave that place and they are there forever.  But later it seems they indeed can leave and go back to Earth.

This sentence is grammatically incorrect:  "Suddenly Matthew races to Tara and Clings onto her strongly.  As Both Matthew and Tara disappear, the Warper ship fires,  leaving a hole where Matthew and Tara were stood."  

Like I said I dont know what people critique on this board.  I haven't had the time to read other reviews yet.  As far as the story it is fun and I like sci fi so much that I would love to read more on it.  

I get the impression that this is the beginning to something bigger; something rather nice, thought-out and exciting. I hope you write more.

I have a little advice to add to the review above.

To start off, you don’t have page numbers. Any page numbers I refer to are based on the PDF page numbers.

You need to get some script-writing software. You did really well writing this in Microsoft Word. You have the margins set correctly. There are a couple of widow/orphan problems. For example, at the bottom of page 15 you have a scene heading and top of page 16, the action line for that scene. There is another example where at the bottom of page 16 you have a dialog heading (JOHN) and then John’s dialog on page 17.

When you use screen writing software, all of these format issues go away. I started out using Word to write with. Every time I made an edit that added or removed a line, I had to go through the whole document to chase down the widow/orphan and line spacing issues. This problem went away when I switched to screen writing software.

Also, scene headings, characters, line spacing, parentheticals are all formatted and indented correctly when they are selected from a menu. There are quite a few packages to choose from with prices that range from pricey to free.

Libby posted this awesome link for someone. I’m sharing this link with you.

https://nofilmschool.com/free-screenwriting-software

Several packages allow you to import from different word processors or plain text so you don’t have to re-type the whole story from scratch. You will need to re-format it but it goes fast.

Another format issue is that you need a title page. That also gets taken care of with the software. It has the story title, your name and contact info.

You need to clean up your slug lines. You can’t go wrong sticking to the basic:

INT. or EXT.  LOCATION – DAY or NIGHT.

You have a little latitude with the location in that you can have DAVE’S HOUSE – LIVING ROOM but less latitude with the DAY/NIGHT part. There are exceptions and you need to keep them as exceptions. It is best to stick with DAY/NIGHT and use action text to color in the early evening, morning, lunch time, etc.

You definitely cannot use PRESENT DAY and 7 YEARS EARLIER. Put yourself in the theater. How would you know if it’s 7 years earlier? You wouldn’t unless you read it on the screen. This is done in different ways and I suggest you look this up to see how you want to do it. Personally, I would do it with:

SUPER – OVER BLACK: “7 YEAR EARLIER”

Last but not least, you need to ditch the camera direction and the scene transitions. I have another link that will explain why along with some of the other issues I found:

https://thescriptlab.com/featu.....tle%20Pages%20Simple

The last bit of help I can give you is that I found two typos. That I found only two is a compliment. Nice job. At the bottom of page 15 in Maya’s dialog, she talks about how there technology warps our minds instead of their technology. You spelled it correctly everywhere else.

On page 5, Afia is introduced but she is not in all caps. You did this correctly everywhere else so I know it’s accidental. I make that mistake a lot.

I hope you continue with this. Like Zinemahomework above, I too want to read more about   The In-Between.

Hello everyone and thanks for your comments. I'm sure it's obvious how much of a struggle it is for me to write a screenplay. I do have a knack for telling a good story though. If anybody would like to collaborate on this screenplay please let me know. Preferably someone with a background in Science fiction writing. Yes I am Harvey ball, real name Martin.

I have managed to complete the pilot episode, a full 29 pages (wow, haha). All going well it will be uploaded soon. I'm sure some of you, (like me), get an overwhelming sense of urgency to upload your screenplay ASAP, without thoroughly proof-reading. As such there are some glaring formatting errors. Please take this with a pinch of salt if possible. Full disclosure, since the original piece, (which is still available to download, I have used ai to help with pacing, and description especially, although the latest additional pages are my writing solely (I think I'm getting better, but I might be deluded.) Rest assured the story itself, plot and structure comes from the muddled mind of someone mentally struggling daily, (but on the road to mending). Too many brackets (I'm done!).

I see that you are now using Movie Magic Screenwriter instead of Microsoft Word. A big thumbs up!

I know you don't want formatting advice, but a huge problem remains from the last version:  You need a title page! How is a production company supposed to contact you? Other than that, I didn't see any format problems that stood out as something that would keep this from being taken seriously by a producer.

Actually, there was one other thing: I would drop the page headers. That can reduce your chances of being taken seriously. Telling us the title and that it's a pilot belongs on the title page, not on every page.

Also, you mentioned when commenting on my work that you have trouble with dialog. I don't see it. Your dialog is smooth yet efficient for television. Perhaps someone else with more experience may think differently. I read this from the point of view of a viewer and not a writer.

Lastly, you held my attention well enough for me to want to know about the next episode. What's up with her father Lawrence?  While I would like to see the next episode, you may want to write a proof of concept or screen treatment outlining the theme and general storyline of the series. Writing multiple episodes can lead to a lot of re-writes if the producers like your work but want to change a couple of characters in the pilot.

Thanks for the feedback. I used the Ghost Whisperer template on movie magic which has the header on every page. Will definitely think about dropping it now you say. I know not having a title page is beyond stupid haha. I get paranoid about having my deets all over the wider web. Thanks for the dialogue compliment, it's great to hear.