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Them by Lee Cordner - Short, Horror, Mystery - Two Sheriffs give shelter to a young girl during a storm, but they soon discover that she is something far more terrifying… 14 pages - pdf, format
What's with you and whips of light? LOL. I'm not actually laughing out loud, I just don't know any other way of giving you a clue as to my tone when I said that. It could easily be read with hatred, and that makes me look bad. It's twice in two pages. Twice in a whole novel would be considered decadent... wouldn't it? Twice in two pages is off-putting... makes me think you don't care.
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Cate bins the cup, at the kettle.
The above sentence needs reworking. It doesn't make sense like that.
Page -9... and we have another whip of lightning. I'd like to see you being more inventive.
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Light light-bulbs, red-eyes turn on, illuminating the
darkness beyond. There’s dozens of them.
I think you mean 'Like'... however, I still think this can be done better.
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CHILDREN, soaking wet, all monotone in appearance, pale
skinned, bags under their eyes, stand there.
How can somebody be monotone in appearance? Monotone pertains to sound only.
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Holly BITES his hand, rips his thumb clean off.
The above sentence can be done better. Why bother mentioning the hand when she's biting his thumb off?
Written well for the most part, however I get the feel that this is an early draft due to the mistakes and the odd poorly worded sentence.
I don't understand the Ghost's motive for wanting to kill people. They called Cate mommy at the end, so maybe they're searching for a mother figure. Why do they all live in the lake? This reads more like the opening scene of a film rather than a complete short.
Lee, looks like your once again cranking out script after script. I don't know how you do it, bro!
BUT, as I've said before, it appears that you're cranking out scripts without completing them, editing them, fixing them.
I stopped here after 4 pages, not because it's poorly written, but more because it's just not well written. There are loads of mistakes that you should be able to catch by now, which leads me to beleive you either don't care or don't see the mistakes for some reason.
Dustin makes some good points, but there are so many "little things" that should be fixed up.
You continue to pad your scripts with the same thing over and over - people looking at things or other people, on the nose dialogue, and just unimportant info. What you don't include is the real problem. You don't set your scenes well, visually. You don't set your characters very well, either. You tend to try and intro them in a "grand way", but once they speak and act, they have little life.
The way this story starts out, it should be riviting, scary, creepy, etc, but it just doesn't work that way for some reason. The reason is the writing. Again, it's not bad, but it's also not good.
My advice is to seriously concentrate on completing a script before posting it. Read and reread again and again. Each time, you'll catch different things and each time, your script will be stronger and read better.
Stick to it, bro, but slow your ass down and go for quality over quantity. Hope that makes sense.
I'm still trying to figure out how setting a scene works. In my novel, I go through the motions, use certain objects, describe how the characters, say, enter a tomb, what they do when they're inside the tomb, and how they react to it.
The dialogue too. In novels, it's fairly simple to make a character speak the way they're meant to speak, as you have much more time to develop them and round them out, get a feeling for who they are as people.
Not sure why I can't do that for scripts, lol. I keep smashing my thumb with the hammer on something that should be easy, whereas I always hit the nail on the head in novels.
Unless I use the same writing I use in my novel to write my scripts. Maybe go back to few older ones, rewrite them.
I can catch problems in other folks' writing, see some of my script reviews for more clarification, but I just can't "critique" my own, unless it's a novel, then I know the issues and resolve them immediately.
Maybe, once a rewrite is done on my latest, I might have it figured out.
I'm spending a lot of time crafting "Shards" at the minute (The Empty Grave), and basing it in my hometown (which should help a ton).
Consider this the last script I simply "write for the hell of it".
Your action line structure is definetely not visual here.
Consider your opening action line: "A thunder storm RUMBLES outside. Rain hammers the windows." Now consider this version: "Rain hammers the windows, thunder rumbles.
The main problem is your subject. You tell us we're INT in your slugline yet your subject is something that would occur EXT and of course you even tell us that at the end of the sentence, as if we would think there was a thunderstorm rumbling inside the room.
Technically, "Windows are hammered by rain" would place your subject as the windows and therefore in a sense you direct the reader's eyes (and I suppose the camera). This is showing us something now. But, personally, I prefer "Rain hammers the windows" even though technically that's passive writing.
Other things I should mention quickly.
You describe the characters but tell us nothing about what they're actually doing which is in essence what the reader is looking for when they're reading.
Maybe try this out. Get a script for a movie. Watch a scene and then you write the scene yourself. Get down until you think you've nailed it. Open up the script and check how the scene was written. Obviously it won't ever be word for the word the same but ask yourself why they used this sentence rather than something resembling your's. Maybe that'll help. I have no idea, I've never tried it.
Your action line structure is definetely not visual here.
Consider your opening action line: "A thunder storm RUMBLES outside. Rain hammers the windows." Now consider this version: "Rain hammers the windows, thunder rumbles.
The main problem is your subject. You tell us we're INT in your slugline yet your subject is something that would occur EXT and of course you even tell us that at the end of the sentence, as if we would think there was a thunderstorm rumbling inside the room.
Technically, "Windows are hammered by rain" would place your subject as the windows and therefore in a sense you direct the reader's eyes (and I suppose the camera). This is showing us something now. But, personally, I prefer "Rain hammers the windows" even though technically that's passive writing.
Other things I should mention quickly.
You describe the characters but tell us nothing about what they're actually doing which is in essence what the reader is looking for when they're reading.
Maybe try this out. Get a script for a movie. Watch a scene and then you write the scene yourself. Get down until you think you've nailed it. Open up the script and check how the scene was written. Obviously it won't ever be word for the word the same but ask yourself why they used this sentence rather than something resembling your's. Maybe that'll help. I have no idea, I've never tried it.
-J.S.
Hmm... interesting idea here, J.S.
So, say I'm writing something like Terminator 2. I watch the "chase scene" from Termiantor 2 (with the truck and the river) and then I write it down, as I see it in the shot, when the camera cuts, it's a new shot, right?
What I think I'm going to do, is rewrite something while watching a movie. Maybe I can write Terminator 2 again? Do it as I see it, then I know what to do when it comes to my own stuff.
Much more like it, Lee, but action scenes are tough...especially when they're moving from scene to scene.
Watch the original Scream and try writing out the intro, including dialogue. See if you can get it to come out close to teh 1 page equals 1 minute of film. TRy the first 5 minutes or so.
There's little action early on and it's a good exercise to see just how long dialogue takes in film, as well as what you'll need to to include to make it work out, time-wise.
Gotcha. Break up the lines. New sentences. "a fist" for the breaking door scene.
"Scream", will watch this tonight, stab away at the keys as the scene plays out. I believe the scene I structured here is only 1 minute in length, and roughly 2 - 3 pages in Celtx, so it needs tightening.
I'll try it on a few other movies as well, just to get the focus down. This technique is actually really good. Helping me a lot.
Interesting posts regarding how to write one of my favorite scenes from T2.
I always liked how Ahnold and Robert Patrick bounced each other around in that fight scene.
As for Them...
I didn't have major problems with it... or the writing. In fact, I think you have improved your writing quite a bit, Lee.
BUT, your dialogue as a whole, in my opinion, is pretty much OTN.
The characters' actions also come across as goofy or silly... definitely out of place... for what's happening in the setting.
Jeff points out you like to do a "grand intro" for your characters (but afterward they lack "life"), but here I didn't notice anything big, spectacular, or even memorable, about anyone. Nothing was cemented in my mind.
However, I could sense you TRYING to inject "life" into the characters.
It definitely shows, but I think that, in a weird way, it screws with your script, because the actions of the characters just seem... awkward... considering what's happening in the story.
Thanks for the read and the construction. I agree that the dialogue is too OTN, both main characters are thinner than paper and their actions are quite... blase. Pointless.
To be honest, I can't even recall the story, if there is one, lol. I wrote it for the Hell of it, which is the last time I do so.
I'm putting more effort into my features and shorts from now on. Taking my skills with novel-writing and using them to refine my storytelling, development cycles and character driven goals, etc.
I'm using my web, a term known in screenwriting as the "snowflake method" and going all out with back-stories for characters, who they are as people, all the way down to their tiniest pet-peeve (even though it won't matter in the script).
This will allow my scripts to flow better. My characters to matter more. And my stories to be more... interesting.
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