A Day At The Beach by Tom Pascal - Short - Short skit about a lady telling a man to clean up after his dog. 3 pages - pdf, format

Hey guys. I thought of this the other day, and thought it might be a cool little skit. Would be on something like Comedy Inc.

Yes it's a bit rank, but it was that "ewwwww" factor, which I was going for.

Hey Tom,

thought I'd give this one a read since you read mine.

I wanted to like it and I wanted to give you some positive feedback, but....  I'm afraid this didn't really work for me. Maybe others will like it though...

IMHO, this wasn't really a story, but in all fairness you did say it was more like a skit. As a skit it didn't do anything for me either, I'm sorry to say. It's not because I'm a prude or sensitive. It just didn't work for me. I'm sorry.  

Btw, if you were just going for that "eewwww" factor, maybe you should check out Mangia or "Unprotected Sex". They are both ewww type scripts, but still tell a story, which is what we try to do...  

Thanks for the posts. I will check out those scripts.

It is a skit, and I thought of it the other day, wrote it down and posted it. Maybe I should only post scripts which I spend ages on and are good to keep some credibility on this site.

Thanks for reading!

EDIT: Because I am very new to this, I am writing lots, even if it is silly or stupid material. Practise makes perfect aye.

Quoted from Tommyp It is a skit, and I thought of it the other day, wrote it down and posted it. Maybe I should only post scripts which I spend ages on and are good to keep some credibility on this site.

I never spend ages on anything I write.... The difference is, if you post a lot of stuff that are just ideas that come to you at the spur of the moment, it won't take long before people quit reading...

I'm just trying to be helpful...  

I know you are trying to be helpful... and you are. Thanks.

I will work on my stuff in the future. At the moment I am just trying to get the format and structure of my writing right.

Hey Tommy

It wasn't that bad for an early try.  There wasn't much story here and it wasn't quite funny enough for a comedy skit but you did well with the format.

Some pointers.  

First off always fill in your title page.  It doesn't bother you not to see the title on the title page until you have read a bunch of scripts and then it annoys the heck out of you.

Your first action line, A beach.  We already know it's a beach from your slugline.  Avoid repetition like this.

Those little parenthesis things are nicknamed wrylies because one of the most popular was (wryly) - or so it's told.  But that nickname is a good way to remember when to use them.  Only use them if you want to change the way someone would normally say the dialogue.  Such as (hateful) I love you.  They can also be used for small actions within dialogue.

I think this would be improved if you make your characters a little less flat.  It's like they just kind of walked in and said their lines and left.  They have no past and no future. How does John (and John is a very uninteresting choice of a name) know about Albania?  Is he brainy? What does he study in school?  What about Alice?  Did she just retire?  Why is she so concerned about the dog poo?  Did she step in some on the way to the beach?  She must have some reason for giving John a hard time.    

Why doesn't he try catching the poo?  What if he did and something didn't go right?  What if a mosquito landed on his face right at the moment when he caught the poo?  What if the mosquito landed on Alice's face and he smacked it.  They could have a poo fight.   Now that would be funny.

Thanks so much for the post. I never knew about the parenthesis things, now I do.

I could chuck in a few lines to show some of the points you said. Like the reason Alice is annoyed at dog poo. Or why John knows about Albania.

Thanks for reading.

Tom

Quoted from mcornetto What if the mosquito landed on Alice's face and he smacked it.  They could have a poo fight.   Now that would be funny.

This is a great idea.  Funny in fact.  Write it up Tommy and read Mangia.

If you add a little background to Alice then throw in Michael's suggestion.  Slap-stick comedy will ensue.  Bring it on.

All the best.


Javier

Tommy,

All stories (shorts, features etc.) must have the following:

a) a beginning
b) a middle
c) an end

Check out this useful link to learn a little about structure. It doesn't have to be as black and white as described in the article but at least you'll get an idea of how structure helps.

I found your script to be rather boring and not particular funny. I love shit-jokes but the setup here was simply not there. You have a dog taking a shit at the beach, a woman and a guy talking and then a guy shitting at the beach. Point being?

Yeah the script was rubbish. I get it! Thanks for the link, well check it out.

Read Mangia, was very good.

"You have a dog taking a s*** at the beach, a woman and a guy talking and then a guy shitting at the beach. Point being?"

The reason it is funny is because the last thing expected by the woman was for the guy to do it on the beach, so because it was unexpected and its not socially accepted behaviour, it's funny. Then the guy came back to clean up his dogs leftovers, without cleaning up his. This is also funny because he did not touch his leftovers, which is basically the same thing as the dogs. Also the fact that his leftovers "help" the beach and the dogs don't is funny.

Well it's all supposed to be funny. And it's not. At least it's practise.

"Catch it as it falls!?" haha

I thought it was funny, especially when John 'defecated' cuz there was no sign saying he couldn't do it.

Thanks man! Glad you like it.

It was OK...really short and more like a scene in length.  You need to use some apostrophes (') when indicating possesion (The dog's poo hung there)  NOT (The dogs poo hung there).  Not bad really.  Read mine too.  thanks, Dave