Life's A Lottery by Sean Blackburne - Short, Drama - A short tale about a homeless mans turn of fortunes as he unknowingly finds a winning lottery ticket  7 pages - pdf, format

Not sure if it's the way it's done across the ocean, but the italics seems weird.
Also, I'm not sure what newsagents is.
There are some problems in your descriptions...
In the first one,
you have "his aged (35) he has a dog called(Lucky)with him"
This is all kinds of wrong. I don't mean to be the bad guy, but take a look at some scripts and you'll see what you can do to fix it.

Also, I wouldn't put OUTSIDE NEWSAGENTS in the slugline.

In your third section of action/description, you have him thinking about how he lost his job as an estate agent and his home to the recession...
There is no way that an audience watching this on screen would have any idea that that is what the homeless man is thinking. Maybe have him comment on it, then have a pause, where we can see it's weighing on him.

Right now, I'm on the second page and I've already found quite a few typos, including "i".

Again, on page 3, you have a very specific reason for a character feeling a certain way. There is no way I would know that the Indian man feels that way.

You tend to write very long descriptions. It's okay, but you should break them up some. (not just one large block of action/description).

Also, you could benefit from getting rid of the on-the-nose dialogue.

Get rid of "as you see". If it's in the script, we see it.

There are  a few sentences without periods at the end.

At the bottom of page 5, you have the word "Thatch". Not sure what that means.

I liked the idea of your story.
You make the homeless man pretty likable.
And the reversal at the end is good.
I would suggest an exchange of words between the business man and the homeless man.
The homeless man treats him the opposite of how it was in the beginning.
I think it would hit harder if the business man assumes that the newly rich homeless man is going to treat him the way that he acted in the beginning, only to find that the homeless man, even now that he is rich, still has a heart of gold and takes pity on him.

There are a ton of problems with this script, but there's a nice story in there somewhere.
A rewrite would help tremendously.
I'm sure you can make this into a good short.

Good luck!

Hey Sean,
...a good concept, but very hard to read through the typographical errors ("i" for "I", "thatch" for "that's", etc)  and formatting.  Also, dialogue heavy and verbose descriptions need tightening.

Quite filmable; but needs lots of polishing.

I, personally; wouldn't call a supporting character "business man", yet alone the main character "homeless man"... not sure what others think?

Ensure you proofread and maybe pass on to a friend to proof also.

Hey Sean.

I want to start off on a good note and say that you have a great story going, here

However, right from the start I noticed a few problems with the grammar. Nothing that can't be fixed, though. Most of your grammatical errors were simple things like capitalizing the dog's name, putting "you're" instead of "your" and "I" instead of "i". These things are pretty major in any form of literature, no matter how stupid they may seem.

I'm not sure if anybody else agrees with me on this, but the first sentence does seem way too long. Instead of that long paragraph, I would try something like:

"A scruffy looking HOMELESS MAN (35), sits outside a news agent with his dog, Lucky." and then proceed to dive further into the action.

"... he thinks back to how things were..." How do we know what he's thinking? Try not to include anything in the script that the audience can't see.

Some of your paragraphs seem a bit too long. Again, this may not seem major, but your script should be as dumbed-down as possible, so that lazy readers don't feel intimidated by this script. Try break the long paragraphs down into shorter paragraphs.

I struggled to get through this one, sorry to say and that wasn't because it was a bad story (I quite liked it) but because of the simple errors that were made. Incorrect grammar is really off-putting for your readers.

If you proofread this script, fixing your errors and you should have a great script with a great story.

Good Luck!

Daniel

Hi Sean, overall I enjoyed the story. However as people have already pointed out there are a few things you could fix. The "on the nose dialogue" for one kinda makes it difficult to believe. I think the saying "know your character" applies here, I've never heard a homeless person speak so formal and proper. It just doesn't sound natural. Another thing I would suggest is to proofread your work. The copy of " big and bouncy " magically became " big and juicy" while he was insulting the clerk. And lastly the typos and chunky descriptions others have pointed out.

Title's on the first page as well as the title page - not sure you need that.

You may want to start people off right:

... FADE-IN
-- is often FADE IN:

... EXT-DAY OUTSIDE NEWSAGENTS
-- maybe try: EXT. NEWSAGENTS - DAY

You may find yourself getting more positive responses if you desist from using italics for all of your action lines. Every single one of them.

... his aged (35)
-- ...he's aged - but then just go for NAME + age.

It's generally advised to CAPITALIZE the names of new characters.

... a look of dispear
-- maybe 'despair'?

Great to see you making a good effort on a script - keep writing & you'll keep getting better.

Simon

Sean, you have a few format issues but they are easily changed so I won't dwell on them but they do need correcting or you'll suffer the wrath of some lol, only joking.

The story here is very much told rather than shown. The homeless man's backstory is told to us but the viewer wouldn't know this, you need to find a way to include this visually or cut it out.

Some of the homeless man's dialogue reads like V.O. to me.

The shopkeeper says he's not called so no need to put it the action, it's things like this that need to trimmed.  Your script will read much better without them.

I'd drop the supermarket chain name, EXT. SUPERMARKET - NIGHT is enough.

The shopkeeper shouts him back, that should by dialogue.

I'm not buying the new homeless man. I think he'd have lost his job long before his home so I doubt he'd still be clutching his p45.

This is a nice little happy story but needs a little work.  Some of the dialogue is too on the nose. Try reading it aloud and it sounds unnatural. I'd name the characters too, it makes it easier to follow.  Clean this up and it will read much better.
Best of luck.