Current by Brian Ji - Short, Drama - As a young man struggles with a drug addiction, he learns the price of change. 6 pages - pdf, format

I’m not sure that the “my friend died so I’m going straight” idea is terribly original, but you execute it fairly well.   I liked the dialogue, even though it came across as “too smart” for these characters in places.  I especially like the “mixing chemical fuck and chemical you” line.  The main problem is that I don’t believe that Will is going to stay sober for more than a week, so it somewhat dulls the impact of the ending.  Your log line says a young man struggles with a drug addiction, but I didn't notice anyone here actually struggling (more like the leaf just drifting along).  And is it the price of change that's being learned about, or the cost of not changing?

You need to do a lot of work to clean this up grammatically (see below), and while some of the flowery language works in your description blocks, it just as often sounds jarring or out of place.  Find areas where you can be less wordy.  For example, “Will grabs the money and flaunts it in the air.  He produces a big smile.” This sounds awkward.  Try something simpler, like: “Will waves the money in Rob’s face and smiles.”

Your scene where Brett walks in on them doing coke has a few problems.  First is the groaner of it being an old sit-com cliché.  “Everything will be fine as long as Bob doesn’t walk through that door.” Then  Bob walks through the door.  Groan.  Cut out, or change, the dialogue in the opening and just have Brett walk in on them.  Next, why does Brett even come to the apartment?  He walks in, banters, says he’s going to visit mom and dad, then leaves.  It seems like his only reason to have him come home was for the purposes of being in the scene.  At least have him pick up a book he’s bringing to dad, or have him there to see if Rob wants to go visit their parents (nice bit of conflict there).

Format/Mechanical Notes:
Pg. 1: Avoid passive voice when possible (“leaf is caught,” “face is caved in,” etc.)
Pg. 1: “pin” should be “PIN”
Pg. 1: How does smoke “reveal” sunglasses?
Pg. 1: “your quitting” should be “you’re quitting” – This is a big problem throughout your script, you miss a lot of apostrophes (your for you’re, were for we’re, and brothers for brother’s, etc.)
Pg. 2: “multiple as” should be “multiple lines as”
Pg. 2: “his eyes explode” – Be careful with language like this in a script.

Good luck!

Brian

Not a bad story, some nice writing in parts too. I liked the cutting to the riverbed for the reflective scenes (tho "riverbed" is a little confusing as an actual location for both people to be talking to one another..."riverside" maybe)

You had some nice flourishes here & it was a nice device to convey your msg you are driving home here.

I suppose the major drawback which rjbelair touched upon is that we have seen this story a billion times before. So the overall lesson feels flat & uninvolving as we are saturated with these kind of fables day in day out.

BRETT
What the hell is this?

WILL
Nothing, a science project for
school.

BRETT
You don’t even fucking go to
school.

WILL
Sure I do, the project is to mix
chemical fuck with chemical you.

BRETT
At this rate your going to have a
fucking heart attack by the time
your 25.

WILL
Good. That way I’ll die before I
turn into you.

BRETT
When the fuck are you going to
change? You’re not a teenager
anymore.

WILL
Yeah yeah, if I wanted my ears
yelled off I’d go live with mom and
dad.

BRETT
And what the fuck is he doing here?
He gestures to Rob. Rob looks down.

WILL
What?
(In a British accent)
He’s me best mate.

BRETT
Well I’m going to see mom and dad.
This shit better not be here by the
time I’m back.

WILL
I couldn’t agree more. I’ll get
right on it.

All that above exchange was excellent. It read very fluently and naturally, well done.

However, again rjbelair makes a valid point about the Brett entering in just after they talk about them & then leaving without actually doing anything only to give out to Rob.

Maybe have enter him come in from room without any prior mention or warning cos the following controntation is probably the highlight of the script for me.

Aside from a few grammatical errors & confusing prse here & there this was a good piece with great room for potential & more then enough signs to suggest that you can improve immensely on this.

Take another look at the story as a whole, the overall flow of events & conclusion. See what parts need it be beefed up & what can be trimmed down.

Best of luck

Col.

Thanks for the read and the feedback.  I'll try my best to go over and fix all the grammatical errors and fix up the descriptions.  Especially the descriptions as it is still something I'm learning as I go along.  The whole passive vs active thing is something I think I've always had a problem with so it's something i'll definitely try to correct.  The grammatical errors are just the result of being a product of the digital age.  Must have forgot to run spell check (=.  As for the concept I was aware that it wasn't the most original story but this was more for practice than anything else.  Just wrote about something that I was familiar with.  Hopefully my next post will have corrected some of the problems you guys have suggested.  Once again thanks for the feeddback.