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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    One Week Challenge    March, 2013 1+6WC  ›  A Written Descent = 1+6WC Feature
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Don
Posted: April 27th, 2013, 12:28pm Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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A Written Descent by James Fisher (jamesthejudged) - Thriller - A struggling writer gets inspiration from pictures of grisly murders he finds on a recently purchased cell phone, and is haunted by an unknown killer that leads to his family life and his sanity spiraling out of control. 101 pages - pdf, format

Here are the first 11 pages: http://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?m-1363527611/



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Don  -  April 27th, 2013, 12:41pm
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Grandma Bear
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Hi James!

Your logline intrigued me the most of all the scripts, so, your script will be the 1st one of these 7WC scripts for me to read.

First off, big congratulations for finishing a feature in such a short period of time. I think you did pretty good with this one. However, as always with 1st drafts, this script will need rewrites.

You kind of have 2 things going on in this script. One of them I like. I like the part of a killer wanting to have a book written about himself, so he forces a writer to write the book about him and his killings. The other storyline that I was less fond of was that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing. I think you should pick one or the other, but not have both of those storylines. It makes it confusing.

There were quite a few things that were a bit unbelievable. Or did not make sense. I will try to go over those.

Your characters were so so. I can't say that I liked Ethan at all. And I like him less and less the more I read of the story. Grace, was not bad, but she did not do much of anything really. Kind of bland. Michael, seemed sometimes younger than 7 and other times older. I'll try to point out more character issues later on.

The writing itself needs some work IMHO. There are numerous typos and errors and at least on one ocation there is repeated parts of text. You also need to work on some of your descriptions. Sometimes it was hard to picture the places or the action that is happening.

IMHO, the ending needs to be fixed too. You can almost cut all of the last ten or so pages.

The following is more, page by page comments.

Page 1. I didn't quite get what this 1st scene had to do with the rest of the story.

Page 2. I never quite understood the scenes on the long crossroad either. I know that those are his dreams, but…

You also have a slug line on this page. INT.  LIVING ROOM - DAY but the following is confusing. We see Ethan in the living room, but he immediately walks outside. Why even have that scene that all if he is only going to walk outside right away? He also chuckles when he thinks about the dream. That was confusing because I did not know at the time that the crossroads seen what's Ethan dreaming. Perhaps you can have him wake up in the bedroom instead. Then it would be easier to connect their dream scene and the next one.

Page 3. You have a lot of dialogue in this script. A lot of it is just exposition. At other times it's repetitive and do not give us new information just telling us stuff we already know. Something to think about in the rewrite.

You did pretty good though, and showing us what Ethan used to be like and that he is trying to go clean. The only thing I did not care for is the flashback on page 5. Seeing Ethan hurting Michael made me instantly dislike Ethan. I know he's trying to get better and become a better person, but abusing his kid is hard to get over. After that, I did not like him. Even when you show him in the present trying to make up for the bad things he's done.

Page 7. Do 7-year-old kids tell their parents to shut up? Maybe they do…

One thing I had a hard time believing is why they have liquor in the house when Ethan is a recovering alcoholic? Ditto that for the OxyContin. If he used to abuse these pills, why are they still keeping them in the house?

Page 11. So Grace is in bed and she asks Ethan if he is coming to bed. After they talked for a while Ethan goes into his writing room and a clock shows us it is only 9:38 PM. They can go to bed whatever time they want, I just thought that is kind of early for adults.

Dave also seems to be calling Ethan a lot. I know he is his publisher/agent, but he never seems to call Grace who's his sister…

Lots of dialogue again between Ethan and Dave that can be trimmed since some of what they are talking about is repeatitive.

Page 16. Ethan thinks he sees/hears something in the forest and goes out to investigate. It turns out to be nothing, but he gets his phone ruined. Until this point, nothing much has happened in this script. And nothing of real interest happens for another few pages. I would suggest that you make the phone thing happen a lot earlier. As I'm sure you know, there has to be an inciting incident on or before page 10 or an audience will get bored. Move the phone thing in earlier and keep the chatter for later.

This is all I have time for today. I will post the rest tomorrow.  


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JamesTheJudged
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(please no one read this if you haven't read the script, spoilers are afoot)
Thanks for taking the time to read my script!

I owe a lot of the awesome factor of the logline to Gary (hawkeye).

The underdevelopment of Grace and Michael has to deal with that the whole story centers around Ethan. I know it isn't a very good excuse but hopefully that can be fixed in draft #2!

Typos and errors that I miss, those are always fun!

That ending, I'm so uncertain of where to take it. The only concrete thing I do know is I want a twist and to reuse that song.

Page 1, my way of trying to make something happen in the first 10 pages Maybe in the rewrite I can put one of the officers in a returning part later on.

Crossroads I connect to finding one's real self. It's also a different way of showing progression in the story, with each time we have a crossroad scene, something has changed.

Not that sure how I can better talk about the past events and moving into a new home. Maybe start out with them driving a moving truck there.

Ethan abusing Michael may be a little to rough but sometimes it happens. I kind of tried to use elements from Jack in The Shining but I guess it didn't work. Most of the story is Ethan trying to balance this killer business but yet at the same time trying to make things right with his family.

Actually yeah, some 7 year olds do say shut up. I've had a friends 4 year old brother tell me to shut up and try to punch me in the happy place. Kids can be vicious but Michael is like a happy balance.

Liquor part, well people like to party it was more for cooking and Ethan kind of abused his privilege. It's been two years so I think it's understandable that with alcohol, you may be a little more lucid. The Oxycontin though serves a purpose. Grace says in a fight that she never bought the pills. Ethan may have gotten them during an episode.

Grace and Ethan's bedtime can be linked to being tired after just moving into a new house. Going into more detail with that I'm sure would help the reader.

Dave calling Ethan a lot is more than just for business purposes. I could evaluate more in the rewrite but I wanted the slight undertone that he doesn't absolutely trust Ethan at the moment, so he repeatedly calls him to make sure nothing has happened. He doesn't call Grace because he knows she's not the one who has had past problems. Again, it can be better shown in a rewrite.

Page 16, yeah I can maybe move that near the beginning.

Can't wait to hear the rest!  


My scripts for your viewing pleasure!

FEATURES
Jonah Hex: The Six Guns- Draft #2
http://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?m-1363300304/
1+6WC Script: A Written Descent
http://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?m-1367083704/

SHORTS
Stage Four
http://www.simplyscripts.com/scripts/STAGEFOUR.pdf
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Grandma Bear
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Continuing with the rest of the comments.  

Page 18. Would a phone company keep a three year old phone?  

Page 19. I never really understood Robert. Except for him getting attacked later and helping out on occasion, he seems to just show up to drink.

Page 21. It isn't until this page that things really start to happen. Like I said earlier, IMHO, you need to have this happen a lot earlier in the script to ensure an audience's interest.

Page 23. As mentioned yesterday, I like the idea of a killer forcing a writer to write a book about him and the killings.

Page 26. I still can't believe that someone that is a recovering alcoholic would keep liquor in the house. Maybe you could show Ethan struggle a little bit with this and then finally give in and buy a bottle and then hiding it from Grace?

Page 27. Again, Dave knows Ethan's past and yet he suggests that he should drink some rum when he finishes the book. I don't think friends and family do that if they know someone has a problem with booze.

Page 28. I don't understand how Ethan had blood on his hands outside. This suggests that he is the killer. The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde idea, but if that is the case then there are several other things that don't quite wash in this story.

Page 31. I am having some problems with Grace here. It seems to me that she should be happy with Ethan getting over his writers block, but instead she is complaining that he is writing too much.
Also, they have been married for many years, would she not know their financial situation?

Page 32. Again, it's hard to imagine that Grace would buy rum when she definitely remembers the bad old days of substance abuse by Ethan.

Page 33. I like that you show Ethan trying to be a little bit more of a family man. However, by them watching Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the TV further brings home the point that Ethan might be having some personality disorder. I'm not so sure that you need to have that here. It's a little bit too blunt, in our faces. Perhaps you can have them watch something else instead. Leave it a little bit more of a mystery.

Page 37. Here I have the same issue with the OxyContin I did with the rum. It is hard to believe that they would have a bottle of pills in the medicine cabinet when Ethan used to be an addict. Again, perhaps you could show us, Ethan going out trying to find more pills instead of just conveniently finding them in the medicine cabinet.

Page 40. Robert comes off really weird to me. He just goes over to Ethan's house to drink in the middle of the day?

Page 41. And here is Ethan and Robert drinking again.

Page 42. I think there is a law or something, that you had to tell someone when they buy a house if there has been a crime committed in the house. Like a murder. I also had a problem with Robert saying " looks like that police thought it they left some tools you'd feel better about the whole murder thing".

Page 47. I'm still confused about these dreams and Ethan having blood on him and having a knife in his hand and things like that. Don't take me wrong, I like stuff like that. In fact I have a horror feature I wrote called scream for me that has a lot of the same elements to it.

Page 48. I know you want to hide the killer's identity, but wearing a trench coat, sunglasses and the scarf around her face is a very suspicious outfit. Especially later on when we find out that he was hanging around Michael's school.

Page 49. Wouldn't it be more realistic if the phone store had the previous owner's name on the computer instead of a paper receipt to the back? After all, the phone was traded in 3 years ago.

Page 54. When Ethan tells Robert about the situation, he is telling us the audience what we already know. You can actually do what I did with my script. You can have Ethan tell Robert that he has something important he wants to tell him. Then write LATER and then you have the Roberts response. Like him saying you need to go to the police. That way you are not rehashing what we already know.

Page 57. Right now I'm thinking that most of the scenes lately are either between Ethan and Robert or Ethan and somebody else, but Grace and Michael seems to be nowhere. You might want to involve them a little bit more.

Page 61. Another thought just hit me. The killer is a killer, so, he could be capable of hurting Grace and Michael at any time. Ethan, is really just going by a promise from a killer. With this crazy killer out there, it's just a little hard to believe that Ethan will not go to the police for protection if nothing else.

Page 62. I like how Ethan got a picture of grace sleeping on his phone. That was creepy.

Page 63. Did Ethan attacked Robert? I'm a little confused, but if he did, it might work to have Ethan have one of these dreams first. Just a suggestion.

Page 66. You may want to look into how many of your characters say, until next time. Seems like they all say that.

Page 68. This is where I meant that a guy in a trench coat, sunglasses and the scarf around his face would cause a lot of suspicion and make somebody call the police.

Page 72. I liked when he pulled the mask off and saw his own face.

Page 83. I got a little confused about the weather here. It's snowing and there's snow on the ground than it's raining in the snow on the ground again.

As I mentioned yesterday, I think the ending can be trimmed. It's creepy how you and with Ethan apparently going to kill Michael, but until we get to that point, there's a lot of chatter I can be trimmed.

Anyway, I like some of your ideas here and I think you did a good job for such a short period of time. Now you just need to rewrite it so it is not so confusing in places.

I hope any of my comments will be of help and I wish you good luck with this.  

Pia  


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EWall433
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Hi James!

This was an intriguing story with a lot of good ideas. I’m not sure all the pieces fit together yet though. These are some of the notes I took as I read.

Pg. 2 “He chuckles as he thinks of the dream” What dream? How do we see this?

Note: Knowing that there’s history of abuse between Ethan and Michael is different than seeing it. You risk sympathy for Ethan by showing this too soon.

Pg. 17-18 The school seems to be less than 30 seconds away from Grace’s supermarket. There’s a very quick conversation with no cuts, and they are there. Not really a problem I suppose, but is it intentional?

Note: Ethan’s first encounter with Robert seems creepy to me. Assuming it’s meant to be, it might be creepier still to introduce Robert on the previous night; just a few moments after Ethan’s trashed his phone.

Note: Ethan’s surface motivation for not calling the police seems thin to me. Is he really putting the possibility of writing a book that will maybe make enough money over stopping a maniac’s ongoing murder spree? I feel like Ethan should be convincing himself that he’ll call the cops as soon as he gets enough info on who the Killer is, or be assured by the Killer that the murder spree is fully in the past and therefore unstoppable. Then you could poke away at that logic as the story progresses.

Pg.  ~22-27 Characters are on phone calls not designated with V.O. Some might be intentional, but all?

Pg. 31 “With that attitude I’d that you aren’t angry with me?”

Pg. 33 “’Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ is playing” Some suspicions of mine are going off like an alarm bell.

Pg.55 “willing to let someone else boos him around”

Pg. 56 I really do think that this should be the first we hear of Ethan’s abuse towards Michael.

Pg. 60 Grace is too forgiving for too long. They’ve been married for over 20 years and gone through the substance abuse thing before. I think she would be more aware (or openly concerned) about Ethan’s tumble off the wagon than you have her.

Pg. 63 I like the idea of Ethan and the phone’s video tracking through Robert’s house in unison. Maybe elaborate on the video more. What was the Killer seeing as he moved through the house versus what Ethan sees now.

Pg. 97 Doubled up a scene here.

I really liked the momentum of this story and appreciated what you were going for here. My two biggest problems are…

1. Later in the story you introduce the idea that the Killer will target Ethan’s family (or others) if Ethan stops writing or attempts to contact the police. I think those stakes need to be moved up to the first conversation between the two. After the first conversation it appeared to me as though Ethan was going along with this solely for the inspiration.

2. The Jekyll and Hyde reference allowed me to nail down the twist at about a third of the way through. If you really feel tied to that twist you might want to be less on the nose about it; and misdirect like hell. Throw reasonable suspicion in any plausible direction you can. Could the Killer be a crazy fan? Could he be Robert, the creepy neighbor who seems to know everything about the murder house? How about Dave the brother in-law/publisher whose success and failure would also be tied to Ethan’s next book?

Hope I don’t come across as harsh. I really did like the ideas you had going on in here and enjoyed mulling them over during the read.

Congrats on the first draft and good luck with next!
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RJ
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James,

I haven’t read any of the other comments, so forgive me if I’m repeating things.

I got the opening scene – you’re leaving us hanging for something later, that to me worked.
The first thing that felt really odd to me, besides the title cards (which don’t need to be there) was the flashback with the cocaine – it really didn’t seem to fit. IMO, just moving straight to the study scene would work better and then back to Ethan. I get what you are trying to do, but IMO it might work better in dialogue if Dave mentions suchandsuch meetings, since he asks anyway. Same with the alcohol scene – both flashbacks take us from the story to somewhere completely different and not in a good way. All up, IMO, this would work a lot smoother with just an intercut scene between Dave and Ethan.

Saying that, I do think this read a lot better than your first draft. You’ve put a lot of work into it and it shows.

Pg 5 – another flashback. Although this one works better than your other two, these are really becoming a distraction for me.

Pg 6 – I can’t help wondering if these flashbacks could be used somewhere later within the script.

I’m finding it a little hard to believe how chummy Michael is with his dad. Even though it’s been two years off the stuff, I still think that Michael would be a little reserved. I know for a fact that 5 year olds hold onto things. They are so smart at even that age and younger.

By page 12, I’m not really seeing anything overly enticing atm. The first scene on page 1 kicked everything off, but then nothing much has happened since then.

Why would Dave say to get a side job and then say that a distributor wants Ethan and he’ll be paid up front? I think it would be better to state the distributor thing straight after Dave says no about the loan.

Pg 18 – I thought this was the perfect time for a little conflict between Grace and Ethan over not wasting money on a new phone, but it wasn’t there.

19 – Didn’t feel that the electronics store would have 3 year old second hand phones – correct me if I’m wrong. And, IMO, another missed opportunity for some conflict. Doesn’t need to be aggressive, but I would picture the sales attendant going back and forth with Ethan on the price a little. He gives in too easily.

The convo between Robert and Ethan came across very ‘on the nose’ to me. I think there could be a better way of getting the house’s history across.

Pg 22 - PHONE SERVICE
Connection terminated.
Wouldn’t there just be beeps?

To me, I don’t know whether the phone call works as such. I don’t want to rip anything from Steve’s Bad Connection, but since the guts of this is different I would think it would work better if Ethan found images and videos and started using them to influence his books and get into the mind frame of a killer – Just as he is about to delete the videos, he reconsiders then decides not to, then uses them as inspiration and begins to have 'evil' thoughts about doing things to others. IMO, the whole ‘Killer coming after him’ could probably be cut then the main guts of it could be Ethan turning violent – rewatching and rewatching the videos, etc. – just my sick mind coming up with ideas as I read on, it’s your choice, whatever you do with it.

Pg 24 – Dave needs to not give in so easily. He needs to snap a little – this was a very important meeting after all.
Pg 29 – the conflict between Grace and Ethan is good, but felt very out of place as Grace has always been so overly loving previously. I would picture this type of reaction if he had done it a few times now.

Pg 32 – at this point in time, this is playing out more like a drama than a thriller. Nothing really thrillerish is happeining.

ETHAN
I’ve always got time for my family.
Just before, he didn’t.

33 – Michael shakes his head in ‘disagreement’.
34 – “I just 'don't' understand it.”

I find it strange that Ethan doesn’t go straight to the police after the killer threatens his family. And then he is so relaxed when talking to Robert in the next scene.

Pg 46 – how would Grace not know already that he doesn’t like being called Mr. Green, after so many years together? If it was a new thing, Grace would be more surprised and inquisitive.

Pg 48 – how does the shop keeper remember who bought the mask so quickly?

I’m not going to keep going over and over characters reactions – feel like I’ve beaten this down a lot in that department.

I don’t know whether I’m right with this or not, but I’m sure ‘fade out’ is not supposed to go anywhere else in the screenplay, but the end - at all.

51 – There would have to been an ambulance on scene, even if Ethan’s injuries don’t seem too serious – they may be internal.

53 – From my recollection, the killer never stated that he lived there.

Pg 56 – Wait…Ethan tried to drown Michael? And Grace is still around – As a mother of 4, I would have picked up and left, never to return and enforced only supervised visits. I mean, it’s ok to have that type of thing in the movie, but Grace’s attitude towards Ethan is REALLY off – She would always be slightly on edge. Two years in a ‘program’ could not fix the worry.

64 - ETHAN
(beat)
No sir. You could try a Mr. Robert
Stevenson, he may still be in town.
Robert and Robert? I’d try to stear clear of having two characters with the same name – makes the audience confused on which character they are supposed to be picturing.

Pg 98 - . INT. KITCHEN -- NIGHT
Ethan opens the refrigerator. He takes out orange juice. He
drinks from the carton. He puts it back. He suddenly stops.
He drops the carton.
In the refrigerator is a bottle of rum. Ethan pulls it out.
The bottle is full with the liquor.
ETHAN
I... I didn’t buy that.

Was this accidently repeated? if not, I don’t get it.

My initial thought with the whole Mr. Hyde thing was that Ethan was the killer, but a couple of things led me astray, again not in a good way, the receptionist at the motel would have had to have a copy of his licence in the system to have leased the room – wouldn’t she have noticed him?

In the end, I did like the twist, but thought most things in the script didn’t really come together properly. Needs a lot of work, but I’m sure you will pull it all together in rewrites to come.

Looking over what I've written, I may seem to be thrashing this when honestly, I'm not. You have some good ideas, you just need to work on them and I'm sure you will.

Hope I've helped to some degree.

Renee
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JamesTheJudged
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Wow, so a month later and I finally respond! My deepest apologies, life has been very hectic and busy as of late.

Thank you for all of the criticism, you brought up a few points that I didn't notice at all and I appreciate it. And I loved the page by page breakdown, really helps my track down my flaws.

@Angry Bear: About Grace coming across as being to forgiving, I wanted to delve a little deeper into her character. I wanted to show her flaws of being trusting but it disappeared due to the time constraints.

@EWall433: I agree that I was overly on the nose with the Jekyll/Hyde parallel. I fell victim to not giving the audience enough credit to think for themselves... oops. I didn't think about a bait and switch and with the way I wrote Robert, it would work really well with some revision. Also, being harsh when it comes to this is fine and needed

@bflywings: I'm a fan of slow starts to a movie. That first scene was like a teaser to tide the audience over until the story begins. Once I trim some dialogue it'll be better. The Mr. Green didn't come from the past. She called him something the killer has been saying in (what I imagine) a taunting and threatening way. I didn't have enough time to evaluate Grace enough to show why she would want to stick with Ethan. The dialogue on Pg.98 (Ethan: I... I didn't buy that) was like an acting thing. I write with people acting in my head, this includes putting in moments where the person would trip over their words. Is this not the best thing to do?

The ending... yeah, I'll work on that. I felt the need to put scenes before it to setup where Ethan is after the events with the killer but it really drags on.

Now I shall begin what is my least favorite thing, revising the script.


My scripts for your viewing pleasure!

FEATURES
Jonah Hex: The Six Guns- Draft #2
http://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?m-1363300304/
1+6WC Script: A Written Descent
http://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?m-1367083704/

SHORTS
Stage Four
http://www.simplyscripts.com/scripts/STAGEFOUR.pdf
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