Mr. Gavin by Matthew Sanders - Short, Drama - On the eve of the biggest day of her life, a bride-to-be reconnects with an old friend.  8 pages - pdf, format

I wrote this for a 24 hour local writers prompt. Two characters. One location. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Hi Matt,

I read this yesterday as a matter of fact. And it reminded me of "Footprints in the Sand" - Mary Stevenson.

"The times when you have
seen only one set of footprints
is when I carried you."

This type of thing works well as a written piece of prose but the negatives, from a screenwriting point of view are that the dialogue passages are way too long winded. My advice is that you need some heavy duty editing, and there needs to be more conflict.

You've written according to the 'brief' however even with editing fixes, film is a visual medium so you need to intersperse some action, even if just in flashback. Basically you've got two talking heads and a discussion re what has happened in Abby's life so far.

I also thought, for someone who's about to get married Abby doesn't appear to be very happy, and instead is dwelling on the past and into the 'blame game' re Mr Gavin.

Overall your writing is a little novelistic and you need to get punchier with the dialogue. The punctuation is off in places specifically where you leave a sentence of dialogue with a comma and the next character continues on, and there are too many 'tells' in description.

There is a nice vibe to this and you clearly have a writer's voice, I'm just not convinced this particular narrative would be a riveting 'short'. There are no real stakes for each character, no one's life is in danger, and there's not a lot of conflict really that doesn't just get resolved in an easy back and forth manner.

Someone really needs to break the door down or smash the bedroom window and cause a ruckus imh.  

Anyway, these are my thoughts - perhaps someone else might be able to offer a fix.

Btw, was Mr Gavin a childhood imaginary friend?

Hey!

All three of my scripts posted so far have the same issue. I'm the only screenwriter in my writer's group, so what I get now are these crazy hybrid stories.

I've read that bride's commonly have doubts before their weddings, but I may have overplayed it a bit. Then again, I've never been a bride to be, so I don't know. lol

I just wanted to show Abby as a broken person. Someone who can normally hide her feelings well, but with the stress of her wedding, being back in her old room, etc., everything just comes to a head.

Thanks for your input! I will definitely give the dialogue another look, as I also agree a lot can be chopped. This is a one draft story that I just threw up after last weeks meeting, but I do enjoy it for the most part.

*Spoilers*

Mr. Gavin is an imaginary friend.

Matt,

Since you've been pretty active on the boards I thought I'd take a look at one of your other scripts.


::SPOILERS::
A few notes as I go:

• You need a left justified, FADE IN:
  
• Your slugline says that it's "DAY", yet "pale moonlight" illuminates the room.
  
• You overwrite but you already know that and it seems like you're going to work on it.
  
• You need to capitalize a characters name when they're first introduced.  ABBY, 28.
  
• Why is the room set up for a little girl?  It seems like Abby grew up here and I can't imagine a teenage girl living in a room with pink walls, dolls, and tea cups.
  
• Again, capitalize MR. GAVIN, and give him an age.  A lot of people use general ages such as, 30s, 40s, 50s.  I prefer to give them an exact age.  When I write I know the ages of my characters and what kind of life they've lived.
  
• If Mr. Gavin has been with her the whole time why would he say, "Look at you!  All grown up!"?
  
• When Abby goes into her soliloquy, everything is on-the-nose.  You need to be more subtle.  Plus her emotional dump comes out of nowhere.  Build up to it.  I would start off with Abby asking Mr. Gavin where he's been.  Maybe he tries to answer but she cuts him off and then enters her tirade.
  
• You go on a bit too long describing all the things that Abby and Mr. Gavin used to do together.  I got the point fairly quickly.  Use a couple small things from Abby's past then only tell me critical information such as Abby's mom getting sick.
  
• Does Abby climb into bed with her clothes on?
  

This wasn't a bad script, but it needs to be cleaned up.

Jordan

You know, it never occured to me that Abby was still in her clothes when she went to sleep.

The room the two characters were in was Abby's when she was a child. There's a sentence in the middle of Abby's tirade that talks about her and her mother moving out.

Thanks for reading. I will definitely keep these in mind when I rewrite.

Hey Matt,

Welcome to SS.

I read and I liked the premise of your story, and as you may have heard, your formatting and execution is way off. I suggest you get reading other scripts. You'll see how the format is supposed to look. You'll also see how your long action blocks are way overwritten and filled with unfilmables. You only need to write what an audience might see on screen, not feelings and not emotions. That is what your dialogue is for. Show us their emotions through that, or from a look on a face. Always remember we're watching your script, not really reading it.

You also need to lose the continueds at the top and bottom of each page. They're not needed.

Other than that, it was a sweet tale. And it does have a hint of "footprints" to it. But your story is SO buried under all your unnecessary descriptions it loses impact. I think you can cut at least two pages off this and we'll get the same sweet story, just better!

Good luck.

Steve