Summer of Fear by Marvin K. Perkins - Thriller -  In the summer of 1969 the city of Memphis, Tennessee sweltered in the summer heat and himidity. A serial killer James Puttnam, a man with a troubled past, and a tragic childhood, is on a  murderous rampage. He would be caught, tried and sentenced to death, This is his story.  71 pages - pdf, format

In the first 10 pages, I've found this story to be very "on the nose." Everything written is so obvious. The main character is a caricature of a sociopath. His back story of abuse is so cliched that there is nothing interesting about it. There's just nothing intriguing here to keep me wanting to read more.

What your story lacks are deeper elements like subtext that digs beneath the surface of what's going on. If in a scene, a character is angry and he yells that he's angry and attacks someone, you've written a boring scene. And in the first 10 pages, it's one right after another of these.

I think there was a scene in The Godfather where a mobster tells another mobster to watch his back because accidents happen. What you have is veiled threat spoken with a smile. This is far more compelling than if he shakes his fist and declares to the other gangster, "Hey man, I'm gonna get you!"

But keep at it, and congrats on finishing your screenplay. And also for having it written and formatted properly with no glaring misspellings or typos, you've succeeded where many others have failed.

No, it's another fail. There is one glaring typo on the title page, and misspellings and punctuation errors in the first paragraph, and in the opening dialogue, and the following dialogue...

The story didn't grab me because although I don't know everything about US court procedure I wouldn't expect sentencing to follow directly from a jury decision, and if the presiding judge referred to the accused as a "sack of shit" it would surely result in a mistrial? Sorry, Marvin, where the words "serial killer" in a logline are usually reason enough not to click a link, I was curious to read this properly formatted script, but I couldn't believe in it, and stopped there on page 2.