Let The Dog Out by Erin N. Calhoun (Gabeyreid) - Short, Comedy - Paul,his wife and daughter leave town for a wedding.  Paul asks his step-brother Denny to drop by the house to feed and let the dog out.  This screenplay is a look at all Denny's mishaps while staying at Paul's house. 13 pages - pdf, format

Hi Erin,

I feel that “Let the Dog Out” needs a lot of work to get it firing on all cylinders.  The story in this draft is muddled, the comedy often falls flat, and there are a lot of formatting issues.  I do like the basic premise, a loser family member is trusted with a simple task and manages to totally screw it up.  There’s a lot of potential with this set up, but you need to put more into this to make it work.

First problem, I feel, is too many characters.  Christa doesn’t serve any real purpose in the story.  Think about how the story would change is you simply removed her.  If the answer is, “nothing different happens,” then she needs to be cut.  Also, I think you’d be much better off combining Jason and Troy into one character – so it would just be Denny and a buddy going to the house.

A big part of the reason the comedy doesn’t pop is because Denny doesn’t have a goal.  He and his friends just show up, trash the place, and leave.  No real conflict there.  Now if you did something like give Denny a reason that he absolutely MUST handle this simple, little favor for his brother, and he is sincerely trying to do things right, then the contrast of everything going wrong creates more tension and potential for comedy.  Watching him trying really hard to get it right, and seeing him make one little mistake, try to fix it, and create a bigger problem, which escalates into more trouble – that’s what you should be thinking of in terms of building toward more and more laughs.  Something important for Denny clearly has to be at stake for this to work.

What your story really breaks down to now is that Paul and family go away, Denny comes over and lets the dog poop on the rug, tries unsuccessfully to clean it up, and leaves.  Paul comes home to a mess.  You’re not really cranking the situation up to its full potential.  And the twist at the end just doesn’t work on a few levels.  Firstly, I cannot for a second believe that anyone would record a threesome on the same tape as their daughter’s birth.  If they did somehow by accident, they would immediately erase the sex.  And if, for some reason, they didn’t, they wouldn’t leave the tape out in the living room.  Three strikes.  Fourth strike is that the irony that the boys were looking for Natalie naked, and if they had just been patient they would have scored, isn’t a strong enough twist to button the story since that wasn’t the main goal, just an odd “subplot.”  

Remember, too, that this is a short.  Every line is precious, so you don’t want to waste any space.  The first two+ pages is set-up that you should be able to get across in one page at most.  Think in terms of what info we need to understand the story.  Paul and family are going away, Denny is taking care of dog, Natalie doesn’t trust him, and (maybe) the neighbor’s cat is lurking around.  For instance, you don’t need Paul’s first block of dialogue and you can cut down the “Hi honey, I’m home” exchanges, too.  Just open with Paul coming home, Natalie saying they’re packed and ready to go, then Paul breaks the news that Denny is handling the dog.  We don’t need the information in the opening dialogue because we get it all again when he explains it to Natalie.  This saves you space and gets to the story quicker.

Format/Technical Notes:
General: Character names are only in CAPS when they first appear.
General: Too much passive voice.  Try to eliminate as many instances of “is” and “are” as possible.
General: Don’t need (CONT’D) or CUT TO: in a spec script (saves space, too!)
Pg. 1: “INT/EXT.” should be “INT./EXT.” (period after INT)
Pg. 1: Do we need Paul’s last name?
Pg. 1: Missing space between comma and “lawyer”
Pg. 1: How do we see that he is a lawyer?
Pg. 3: Someone named “TODD” slams the brakes?
Pg. 4: “lets” should be “let’s”
Pg. 4: Extra space in front of “They all look around...”
Pg. 4: No period after “...turn on the TV”
Pg. 5: “chick flicks” line was amusing.
Pg. 6: Don’t break dialogue across pages like at the end of this page.
Pg. 7: Double dialogue blocks (carry over from page 6).
Pg. 7: Extra line after DENNY’s first dialogue.
Pg. 7: “...huh girl.” Should be “...huh girl?”
Pg. 10: Missing word(s) “...it needs professionally cleaned.”
Pg. 12: Don’t need (yells), the exclamation point is sufficient.

As I said, you have some fertile ground for a funny story here, but you need to develop Denny’s character to the point that we want him to succeed and feel his pain as one thing after another goes horribly wrong.  Keep working at it, thanks for sharing and good luck!

-RayB

Erin, I liked a lot of things here...some need work.  The idea was really good and I could see it happening on a screen.  It does need some sewing up, though.  A few implausibilites need to go.  The last line about the threesome kinda lost me.  One thing I really want to stress is that the writing quality is great.  A cut above what I usually see.  Just remember, if it is worth doing, it is worth doing it great.  Be honest with yourself about all the bits.  If they aren't awesome, cut em.  The idea about the birth tape was great.  The characters and dialogue were really spot on.  You seem to have a definite knack for this, so spend some more time with it.  Also, endings can be very tricky.  With this one, the punch was delivered long before it was over and thus the reaction of Paul and wife was totally expected.  The apex of the comedy here was when we first see Denny and company driving and the beer and his personality.  This is when we laugh, because it is absurd to trust this guy.  And don't worry too much about formatting, as so many people do, because if the writing's great, who really cares.  Formatting is not an art, or even a craft.  Just a technicality.  But if you keep writing and reading scripts, you will get the formatting.  So the highs here are character, dialogue, premise, and I laughed a bit while reading.  The lows would be lack of overall story punch, a few implausibilites, and the ending.  Kepp it up.  Oh, and read my stuff!
-Dave