Teen Solutions by David Thomas (darkrealm2k3) - Short, Religious - Teen Solutions presents a scenario where one town's lack of entertainment can tempt teenagers to turn to dangerous activities. 5 pages - fdr, format

There are quite a few issues here, starting with format.

First off, your sluglines:

EXTERIOR: A RANDOM STREET (EARLY EVENING)

should be

EXT.  RANDOM STREET - EVENING

You could even leave out the word “random.” I would.

Why put the names in bold? It’s pointless and it’s not the standard.

You should give your characters names. TEEN #1, etc., is so bland and generic. First it comes off like you didn’t develop your characters enough to give them names and secondly, it comes off as so generic that in conjunction with your vague descriptions, it makes the whole script look generic and uninteresting. You can’t pull readers in with bland generic writing.

I don’t know how many teenagers there are. Three speak but is that all of them? You don’t say whether they’re all boys or if any are girls.

“The teenagers continue speaking.” Uh-uh. You simply cannot write like that. It’s lazy writing. If characters are talking and it needs to be heard, you have to write what they are saying. Somebody has to come up with what they’re going to say. If it isn’t the writer, who do you think will write the lines?

Then you write that “our attention is shifted to:” and have a slugline exactly like the one from the previous scene. If we’ve changed scenes from where we were, you need to notate that clearly.

It’s a little muddled in the second scene. “Others put begin to hide…” and “their reflex their guard…” I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.

“Hoodlum #2 backs down from his statement and apologizes promptly.” Once again, if he says something, you have to write that. I realize you’re trying to keep this from being confining to a director or actors but this type of writing runs the risk of not giving a clear vision of the story or coming off as lazy.

Then on page 3, you actually leave a blank for someone else to insert the name! You’ve got to learn to give characters names. That’s generally considered the writer’s job. Unless you’re hired to write and given the names or some executive asks for a name change, the writer generally comes up with that stuff.

“A few minutes go by as Hoodlum #1 stands by himself…” You can’t write that, dude, seriously. You can’t have a few minutes go by while someone just stands there. Not in a movie. Not unless you want to lose half your audience and leave the other half sitting there wondering if the film is stuck. I realize you can’t possibly have intended for the film to be produced the way it’s written but that’s what’s wrong. It can’t be shot the way it’s written. You have to write it in a way that a director can shoot.

Okay, I’ll stop there with the technical stuff and look at the story.

This is essentially a plug for Christianity. It’s basically:

Teens: “Hey, let’s go to church instead of doing drugs. We love it!”
All The Thugs But One: “Hey, maybe they’re right. Let’s check it out. What a surprise! We love church too!”
The One Bad Apple Who Refuses To Listen: “Not me, I’m the bad guy. I’m not going to church no matter what you chumps say. Church is for losers!”

There’s no tension. The kids easily resist the temptation. They love church. There’s no problem. Life is grand for them. The thugs come around but not because anything really happened to them to bring them around. They just got curious and lo and behold they love church too. The bad guy just stayed bad.

Nobody had any real catharsis here. There isn’t even a main character!

You keep going back to the church but we the audience never set foot in it. What makes church so wonderful? We have no idea. Because you don’t show us. Every time it looked like we were about to find out what was so wonderful about this place, you cut to two weeks later and life was just dandy for everyone. Where’s the drama?

1) Story’s in a state of equilibrium. Check. The kids are just hanging out.
2) Something throws the main character’s life out of balance. Semi-check. Even if all the kids are counted as the main character, their lives are never really thrown off balance. Sure you have the drug dealers serving as a catalyst but what do they do? Nothing. The kids just move along with no consequences.
3) The main character’s goal…oh wait, there is no main character and even if there was a main character, there’s no goal.

This is called “Teen Solutions” but you don’t even show us teens with any problems. Jesus doesn’t save anybody here. If he does, it takes place off screen. You need a main character. You need dramatic tension. You need the main character to go through some sort of transformation. You need to show what’s going on and how that transformation occurs.

In short, you need a story.

Sorry to sound harsh but you don’t even have the very most basic components of a story. The best news is that you don’t have a bunch of spelling and grammar errors.


Breanne

I can't even open this, so I can't comment. What is a fdr document anyway?

I have absolutely nothing against stories written from a sincere religious standpoint - but as breanne says, you need to remember that you are writing a screenplay and a story. Whatever point you want to make, you need to establish characters, settings, situations.

If you want to show that Christ can turn people from temptation, great - but you need first to show us characters we can believe in, sympathise with and understand - and show us those characters being tempted so that when they are turned away from the path of sin, we can feel something for them.

I would suggest your best starting point would actually be the bible - it is full of fantastic stories that you might be able to adapt or be inspired by.

Hey Simon, a fdr is a Final Draft document, you need the program to open it. And it's the writer's fault that he didn't save the script in PDF format.

Sorry David, I have to echo with the other reviewers' comments. The story is pretty flat. There is no setup why the characters start going to church. There isn't much complication that prevent the characters from going to church. And ultimately, there is no resolution of any kind. This happens in real life, but unfortunately not in movies.

Maybe you should introduce the church more. Your story shouldn't be on the teenagers but on the hoodlums instead. Show us why the two hoodlums want to go to church whereas one doesn't. Also show us some internal/external conflicts that the hoodlums face in order for them to go to church. Maybe the church people are prejudice because of their hoodlum status.

Whether the hoodlums succeed in going to church or not, it's your choice. But you need those conflicts to satisfy the audience.

I appreciate the comments and feedback. This was written for a friend who came to me at [b][/b]VERY short notice with a project idea for his church. I'm not a overly religious guy but I am a Christian. Never wrote anything in the religious vein, which explains the story. We are shooting it this friday so it's just going to be a visual presentation for my friend to present to his church for a potential class study group. I will do my best to improve the formatting. My other works (Mindset, In The Shadows) are better formatted (In The Shadows is a work in progress).

Breanne has pretty much covered all that there is to say about ths, David. I , too, was disappointed mostly that we never got to see what exactly made this church sermon fun, even though you made us curious.  

Regarding the title, I guess the churcch offered a solution to their boredom but you don't  show us how, or why, these teenagers (or two hoodlums, one of whom seemed spaced out) were drawn to it, and wanted to change..

"is at still at the street corner, standing alone but that abrasiveness he exudes has not faded, at least to the naked eye.

An extra at, and you could lose the last phrase.

Best,

H