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White Hot Winter by Jack Strickland - Thriller, Mystery - After a man is murdered and another goes missing, a group of small town people receive threats from the killer responsible and fight for their lives before the town explodes as ultimatum. 128 pages - pdf, format
One thing I was taught is "know your audience." For screenwriters our audience isn't movie goers, it's filmmakers and they hate to read because they want to make movies. Our goal is to make a script who's writing is as simple and streamlined as possible. Imagine writing at a high school level.
Think of a screenplay as a blueprint for a film.
Clearly you have a great and impressive command over the english language but some parts of your screenplay are very dense.
Scriptwriting is more technique, its about using the right words in a sequence at the right time.
ELADIO MARQUEZ, Mexican chef, recovering addict, swivels from pan to plate, phone cradled in his ear. He presses his rosary to his forehead and kisses it, gritted gold capped incisors unclench as he sighs at the person he’s speaking to. Grass green eyes focus on food, steam billows over stainless steel and blanches his shaved head. He’s in his early forties and incredibly good looking, had he not found faith and gained a few pounds, no woman would be safe.
This is just way too much and some of the lines are impossible to show on film.
Sorry it took so long to respond. I've been on the road the past couple weeks and it's nice to come back to some constructive notes. I was fearing and hoping I'd be ripped a new one, but your feedback was relatively positive and I plan on trimming all the fat right away. I will also be giving as much as I take (being a new member and active writer etc).
I noticed that people post clips of scripts as they critique. I've looked through the site trying to figure out how to do that. No such luck. You mind?
I noticed that people post clips of scripts as they critique. I've looked through the site trying to figure out how to do that. No such luck. You mind?
It's copy and paste from the script. Then use the BB code tags for {quote}{/quote} or {code}{/code}. Only switch {} for []
EXT. CABBAGE FIELD - NIGHT
Dew sodden crabgrass feathers the edge of the road as an
empty Budweiser box tumbles along burnt roman candles and
airplane bottles, halting behind the heel of a Chuck Taylor
strapped to SANFORD WINKLESTEIN, 20s, knee pressed into the
asphalt, shaggy red chin, hot mess, a candy apple Letterman
jacket powder kegs his stature.
Wow. With an edit or two this would be great in a novel. As said by someone above you have a great command of the English language. Unfortunately, screenplay writing is not about showing off your vocabulary and ability to write really long sentences. It is about being short and to the point. You punch images into the reader's mind. That's it.
What you have above should be split into two action blocks. I like the first bit:
Code
EXT. CABBAGE FIELD - NIGHT
Dew sodden crabgrass feathers the edge of the road as an
empty Budweiser box tumbles along burnt roman candles and
airplane bottles.
That's great. Leave that as the opening image. Then move onto the next shot (star a new action block) which is your protag,
SANFORD WINKLESTEIN, 20s, shaggy red chin, hot mess, a candy apple Letterman jacket, kneels...
I'm actually a little lost how to finish that as I can't figure out whether he's in a cabbage field or on a road. Maybe there is a road through the cabbage field?
Make things clear and break up your action blocks. You are doing the right thing in trying to keep an action block to one sentence and not doing too much wrong actually, as you can tell from edit of the second action block. I'm sure that had you broken up the action block yourself you would have written it punchier.
So you're definitely on the right track. This is a long script. If you want it to be picked up by producers then it's going to need a rewrite.
Remember the come in late, get out early rule of screenplay writing. Kill your darlings. Rewrite this and I'll give it another read. If I read it now I'll find it difficult to read again. I usually only watch things once.
Shall be done. I actually had that as my opening block and then sandwiched it all together for some reason. Before completion I'd been working on this thing for so long that during my polish I made some quick last minute decisions before showing it. I added rather than cut.
I'm developing characters for my next story at the moment but will slice and dice white hot winter over the next several days and hopefeully get some more feedback.
The best way to trim down shit is to 1) "show it, don't say it" and 2) to find a way to combine multiple scenes into ONE SCENE.
I like the title, it sounds cool. I can tell by glancing over your writing that you got style. It may just be me, but I think your dialogue is pretty good and several times it's left me grinning. It reminds me of dialogue from the 30's and 40's - snappy, cool and badass.
But there's something missing from the first 15 that I read. It's not attention-grabbing enough. Besides everybody talking cool, what's happening that's gonna make me want to sit around for 130 pages? That's a long haul.
Like Dustin, I'm not a big fan of reading someone's script twice, so if I see potential with something that's not all there yet, I like to bail out early and wait for the re-write just so I don't have that "been there, done that" feeling during the second read.
Thanks for the kind words. Yeah I wasn't practicing what I preach in terms of show don't tell, but I tried to keep all the unfilmables within the character introductions. Thought I might be able to get away with that. That was dumb. Either way my action lines need to be trimmed like crazy and they will be over the next week. Should have a smoker real soon. Thanks again for skimming. I really appreciate it. Also this is an ensemble screenplay...don't cringe, spent two years and five months writing it but who's counting?
Do you have to post re writes the same way you submit a script?
Two years is nothing to be ashamed of, but a rewrite in less than a week? Methinks you are rushing things a bit.
Friendly advice is to sit on it a bit, do it right. As mentioned prior, few will read through a script twice. Polish and polish again, then submit.
Plus the "one week challenge" scripts are about to be posted up this weekend, and nobody will be looking at anything but those for a few weeks.
All the more reason to take your time.
But yes, post the rewrite as before, with a note to Don in the message box (look for it and you'll see it) that this is a rewrite. He will swap it out for you.