The Seventh Night by Devon Ryan Pattynson - Thriller - Two college students and best friends buy the house that everyone dreams of as a kid. But, soon find out that people, isn't the only thing it shelters. 180 pages - pdf, format

180 pages?  Dude...c'mon now...

Way, way, WAY overwritten in every sense of the imagination.  You really can't write a script over 120 page and expect anything to happen with it, let alone getting reads.  Hell, scripts over 100 pages are long to many.  This...well, this is too long, bro.

I did open it up to see if what I knew would be there, was indeed there.  And, yep, as I knew, there it was.  Let's quickly look at your opening passage.

First of all, you shouldn't ever go over 4 lines in a passage, and your aim should be 2-3, which creates nice white on the page.  Think of each passage as a separate "thought" or 'shot"  Whenever that changes, start a new passage.  Once you see how this works, it will make prefect sense and you'll never look back again.

So, this opening 5 line passage includes asides, unfilmables, and details that we don't need to know, and you don't need to concern yourself with.  For instance:  How do we know he's a college student?  Don't dress your characters unless it really is for a reason.  "He looks worried..." - this entire 2 line sentence is a complete waste.  If you want or need to, simply say he looks haggard, tired, worried, whatever, but not 2 lines worth.  You say, "he stares blankly at people..." - What people?  If there are people in the scene, you need to set that up and when you intro any new characters, human or animal, you need to CAP their first appearance.  The last line is again a complete waste, as your opening sentence actually isn't even a sentence, as there's no verb - the action of him walking up to the front desk should be included in the very opening line, because that's what he's doing.  You already set your scene with your Slug about being in Dr. Lynne's Waiting Room (although that is not a good Slug), so the entire part about "walks into a psychologist's office" is totally unnecessary.

Looking over the rest of Page 1, I see numerous examples of exactly the same issues, as well as many others.  Orphans running around unsupervised.  Nothing of any interest taking place.

You may have a wonderful story buried in here, but literally no one is ever going to find out, because no one is going to read a 180 page script, especially after reading your first page and knowing damn well what's going to plague each and every page.

You should red scripts in here and provide feedback...as much as you can to the point that you get to know some peeps here.  They in turn will be more than happy to help you and steer you in the right direction.  It's a Quid Pro Quo world here at SS.

You have a monumental task in front of you in cleaning this up and whittling it down to around 100 pages.  That's no easy job.  Think about writing only what's important in each and every scene.  Write visually, but don't waste lines on details that aren't your concern.

Best of luck and hope this helps.

I can get five pages to one CRISP, interesting page. This kind of script is why folks won't read a lot of newer writers. 180 pages. Oh, my! It's a novel, I think, posing as a script. That's too bad, too, as there may be a story there buried under its own weight. Respectfully, bb

What's happening?

so yeah, I read all of your script. Don't let the length get you unmotivated. Django Unchained was 167 pages long and it won an Oscar.

I found it to be entertaining. It def is made for a younger crowd with all the references you have in it.

My questions to you are simple tho....

1. The ending was confusing. Ashton lives and everyone in the house dies? If that is true how did he rekindle his romance with his chick who was also at the party?

2. I found it kinda hard to believe after all that went down, that this kid would be able to move on and even start a normal life, (wife, kid on the way) maybe that's just me but the ending kinda was off.

Just my opinions...   Keep up the good work.