Senseless Pleasures by Lee Weeks (yorkshireladdy) - Short -  Not all is as it should be in Victorian England when a pretty woman and her even prettier husband have a life-changing discussion. 9 pages - doc, format

Sorry dude, but your format is all wrong. Lucklily for you format is a really easy thing to fix. First, use the font Courier. Second, never refer to the veiwer as we or us. That takes the veiwer out of the experience. Example:

Instead of-
        
We hear a woman scream.

Simply write it as-

A woman is heard screaming (O.S.).

For more useful information go check out the Screenwriting Class forum.

Hey Lee

You might want to read over a few scripts here to get a grasp of format.  Also you have a lot of WE SEE which is not the correct way to describe.

As for the story, you say ADA is 25 and yet she says her marriage was for 23 years?  I know the vicorians married young but this pushing the boat out a bit too far I think.

It's an interesting story and the dialogue you have is good.  It's quite long in the sense of what happens but in the correct format this will probably be reduced.

Overall I enjoyed this short.

I did actually enjoy this quite a bit.  I'm kind of surprised to hear myself say this since this is not at all typical of what I usually read or see posted on this site.  

I sensed this was done a bit tongue-in-cheek, especially in regards to the dialogue although I'm no expert on Victorian England.  It did seem to fit the stereotype anyway, maybe to a fault - that's why I think this was done a bit as satire.

I can forgive a few 'we see's' - nothing a few taps of the delete button couldn't fix.  Other than that the writting was pretty solid.  I get the impression you're probably a novelist or some other type of writer.  Your descriptions were well-composed and the dialogue was colorful and kept the story moving.

Storywise, I thought this was a pretty good revenge tale.  It read like a chapter from a book.  As a side-note, Lily does seem like an odd name for a Spanish housekeeper but this is a nitpick.  As well, Evan should probably deny any allegation at being outed.

Overall good job.  One of the better short stories I've read.

This was nice little tale, no real twists and turns, just the fun of it along the way.  However, I had a major gripe with the dialogue.  It was so exasperatingly cliche that I almost stopped reading.  Every line is so unbearably British that it basically became a farce.

Now if this was your intention, I have a suggestion...make the murder scene a little more awful.  Makes the humour clearer.

In any case, this was a fun read, I'm not going to bother with your format, you know it's wrong.  Good job.

Quoted from Zack Instead of-          We hear a woman scream. Simply write it as- A woman is heard screaming (O.S.).

To add to this :-

"A woman is heard screaming (O.S.)." is actually in passive voice. Everything needs to be written in present tense, therefore:

A woman SCREAMS somewhere in the mansion.

Or something like that.

But you are correct in your point.
Stew

Review: Senseless Pleasures

Technically:

People have already told you it’s in the wrong font. I converted this to Courier New just to read. It appeared - with a little tweaking - that it’s fairly well formatted otherwise. But it does have some problems.

You break up action okay but you do have some very large chunks of dialogue. Not only are they several lines but they go far toward the right margin, meaning that if you justified them, they would get even longer.

You also need to number pages. The standard is to start with page 2 though I personally find that practice rather silly. I like scripts with every page numbered.

Page 1: VICTORAN - VICTORIAN

Someone’s already mentioned the we sees. They’re very distracting.

Page 1: …coming on foot closer and closer… - is this “on foot” a mistake or a slang I’m unfamiliar with? If it’s a slang, forget I mentioned it.

Other than the aforementioned things, it’s very well written with very few errors. Very good job there.

The Story:

**** SPOILERS ****

I liked it. I thought it had good description and I absolutely adore the dialogue. It had a poetic flow to it while managing to sound very realistic at the same time. Very well done there.

Two gripes:

One; the storm. I realize it was sort of symbolic but it just seemed like such a contrived device.

Two; it was awful risky for Ada to load the gun after revealing the body. Why didn’t Evan do something? You could say Evan was too shocked but it seems more realistic for Ada to have been more prepared.

Overall, I think it’s a job well done. Other than the font, it was good enough for me to overlook all its other format issues.

Very impressive.


Breanne

Hey!

Thanks for the comments you guys, I really appreciate them.  Anyway, I'm glad most ppl liked it even if there were the obvious formatting issues and strange storyline errors (eg, she was married at 2).  I guess you either loved or hated the dialog it seems.

Anyway, I have to admit this was really just an idea I got in my head and felt like doing real fast in between bigger things. To be frank, it's really a drunken knockoff of "dangerous liaisons/lady audley" in case anyone cared to know. I also like what heretic said: "I'm not going to bother with your format, you know it's wrong."  It's almost as if he read my mind(?).

That said, I'll try to comment on some of your scripts soon, but you know how it is.  I'm kinda lost as to what to do next on here since this isn't what I normally write, but, we'll see.