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Consequences by Layne Walker - Short, Action, Adventure - This is a short story about dealing with the consequences of our actions. 5 pages - doc, format
This script didn't work for me at all. You have three people running for their lives through a tunnel, yet they're having a full fledged conversation. Your dialog is on-the-nose, telling us everything that we need to know about the characters. It comes off as extremely artificial, which makes for bad reading.
You need to learn how people talk. And how to tell a story without the characters explaining everything to us with phony dialog.
I didn't really get this. First, when it opened up in Word...that threw me off ..Just used to reading pdf.....Get some script writing software if you plan on giving this a real try. Read your writing out loud to yourself and you will realize this isn't how people speak. Since most of your script was dialogue ...this was the thing that bothered me most. Keep trying. Read ......read ...read...very important.(as I tell myself the same thing)
Layne, I don't recognize your name, so I'm not going to spend too much time dessecting these five pages, but your writing is somewhat vanilla. Not a bad thing if you have a compelling story.
The first thing that slapped me in the face, hard, you're telling us everything and showing us nothing. And it started with your logline... we didn't see any consequences of Mike's actions. Suggestion... add a page and show us.
Phil & Pale Yellow made some good points on the dialogue so I'm not going to re-hash that... only to add, hang out at the mall or a store, ect... listen to people speak. Better yet, pop in a movie, close your eyes and just focus on the speech. It will help a great deal.
Yes, they're running for their life, but it lacked tension for me. So I never felt they were in danger and all the talk didn't help.
Your (wryly's) nothing wrong with using them, if it's done correctly, and here you didn't. I'd get rid of them. Case in point, 99.9% of the time if someone is running fast, there's a good chance they'll be breathing hard... so stuff like that is wasted space. JMHO.
A good example for the use of a wryly....
TARA Jack, are you having an affair? JACK (Lying) No.
Your five pages could really benefit from some sort of set-up. But as it stands now, there's not much here. Your format is off a bit.
Congrats on finishing the script, with some feedback and a good re-write, "Consequences," could be a gem. Having said that...
Writing is a big learning curve... a bunch of stones in the road, but once you cross them, they become your milestones.
Hang out in the forums, you can learn a lot from the community here. They all know way more then I do. I haven't sold anything yet.
I'd echo the above, but I also have to add that the story line fails here. It's important to understand who's story it is - as it's called 'consequences', and these are felt by Mike, then one has to assume that Mike is the story subject - yet he disappears quite soon into the tale - you need to run two lines here - one with the professor and Stephanie, and the other line needs to follow Mike, and what happens to him. This can easily be done as a lot of the information that is contained in the script is superfluous, so it could be tightened, and more information added.
Another issue is Mike's motivation - it's never really explained or hinted at as to why he leaves his colleagues - if you ground his reasoning, then it will give the tale more emotional impact.
Lastly, you need to give some descriptions in regard to where the characters are - it gives a sense of place.
I would say you need to go through certain important things in story/script writing.
1) When you are having a real conversation with people , try to analyze how you hide the deep feelings and secrets inside, they will not come out until you have been put under loads of pressure.
" Show , dont tell " is what every one here will you.
2) This leads to the second thing that is very important while writing a story." Forming an arch" .
Build pressure slowly, let the anticipation grow until the reader or the viewer is dying to know it - and then give the information out.
3) The difference between a good and a bad story teller is how he controls "exposition". Try learning more about it.
4) Watch good movies and see how they expose
I would recommend watching some of the works by billy wilder ,David mamet and Woody allen
as others have mentioned, this one needs a lot of work. the dialogue is too "on the nose," the story makes no sense, and the humor is both mundane and recycled.
follow everyone else's advice. read as many scripts as you can. learn the proper formatting. furthermore, give celtx a whirl. its a free program and it's not too bad for beginners.
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