Innocent Guilt by Robert L. McBride - Short, Drama - When an ex-hooligan falls in love with the woman of his dreams, he realizes he's made the biggest mistake of his life. 13 pages - pdf, format

Hey Robert,
Gave this a read.  Your writing is much tighter in this one, and I enjoyed the dialogue--especially between Peter and lawrence at the diner.

You're gonna catch hell for your asides.  The first time I noticed it, I was like, Ok, no prob.  But you kinda have a lot of them.  They're supposed to add flair, but it just seems a little too cutesy-cutes sometimes.  I guess the rule is to use them sparingly.

The scene at the restaurant where Lawrence meets Susan iincludes a flashback, but you need to end the flashback.  I did a double take because I thought we were time traveling for a second.  Had to go back and re-read.

You also use a lot of cut to's, or cut back to.  Most will tell you this is inappropriate as it's more the decision of the director when to do that and so forth.  At the bottom of page 8 you might want to delete the cut back toand just have the scene at the restaurant open with us looking into Lawrence's eyes, then reveal his sweaty face.  Maybe he blinks a few times.  let's us know that he was just imagining the jump.

Oh, and you have a few typos here and there.  

But otherwise, I'm interested in Lawrence's plight and how this turns out.  Your action was descriptive and not over done, I think.  I could really get a feel of Lawrence sitting on that bench in the beginning.  kinda felt the chill of the air.  That's an example, I think, where one of your asides worked!

Good job on this.  Be looking forward  to reading the rest.

Steve

Thank you Steve, I appreciate it.

Hey Robert,

This wasn't a bad story, but as it is, it's completely unresolved. You really need to put a proper ending to this instead of leaving it "To be continued". If it were a feature that was leading to a sequel, or the end of an episode in a series leading on to the next instalment it would be fine. But it's a 9 page short, so there's no reason for you not concluding things.

The writing needs a little work. The dialogue was pretty good, but you used far too many asides that took me out of the story.

You also have a tendency of 'telling' instead of 'showing' when you describe things. For example, you tell us that it's a cold night and that it's the "type of cold that makes you angry". Try to show that in the scene instead of just telling the reader. Have ice on the ground or frost on the trash cans. Show people's breath on the cold night air. Use things like that to convey something instead of just pointing it out in the text.

You don't need the CUT TOs between scenes, and try to cut out things like "We see" - these are generally only used in pro scripts & shooting drafts, not spec scripts.

I'd name the woman at the start if I were you. She's named later in the script, so there's no point in not naming her when she's first introduced. Also, you start the scene inside the car, but your first line of action describes what it's like outside the car. It may be better to start outside, showing the car driving through the thick fog and then go inside to the conversation.

You need to give your characters an age when you introduce them. You do it with the woman at the start, but then forget to do it for the other characters.

Some of your action lines run too long. A general rule of thumb is you don't want to go over 4 lines in a block, preferably keeping it to 3 or under. Try to split your action lines or cut them down if you can. You'll probably find that you can edit quite a bit of unnecessary description out here and there. An example of this is on page 2 where you have a 5 line paragraph that says:

"Perched on a bus stop bench is LAWRENCE. His dry lips are close to splitting. He’s breathing heavy and in a cold sweat. His raggedy sweat suit has blood on the back of the sleeve. Although it’s freezing, he’s not wearing a coat. The cold doesn’t seem to be prominent on his mind."

This could be streamlined to something like:

"Perched on a bus stop bench is LAWRENCE, dressed inappropriately for the weather in a blood-stained sweat suit. His breath clouds in the freezing air as it leaves his dry, cracked lips."

I don't think the fantasy suicide sequence near the end was necessary. It'd have more impact if we went from the flashback of Lawrence robbing Susan straight back to them in the restaurant.

As I said at the beginning, this isn't a bad story, but it just needs tidying up and finishing. In it's current form it's incomplete. I hope this helps.

Yeah,this was good. But, you don't have ages, and I believe I noticed a camera direction in there as well. The story is sound, and wanted to know what lawrence was up to, other than what's revealed. Dialogue was good as well, nice job.

Thank you all for reading. It's appreciated.

Hi, Robert.

Apart from the things that have already been said, I can't say much more. It was very well written, had nice flow. The dialogue was good too. I've just got to stress how important it is that you show and don't tell. For example, 'Mya runs out the car. Her cell phone in hand. She was tracking him.'. Instead of the last little sentence, show a little radar or something on the screen of the phone. If the director can make it clear what's happening, and the viewer is paying enough attention, it would be obvious that she was tracking him.

I didn't really pick up on anything new but I hoped this helped a little. Keep writing.