The Vultures of Death Valley by Mohammad A. Nawaz - Sci Fi, Fantasy, Crime - An unstable boxer, fuelled by revenge by the ones that left her for dead, saves the life of a psychic entangled in the dealings of psychopathic Mafiosi who will stop at nothing to murder him. 125 pages - pdf, format

Mo,

I'm going to split this review into two sections.

The first will deal with everything up until the end of chapter 1, the second will deal with the four chapters afterwards.

I will start with more of a running commentary of notes, then bring this full circle with some more general thoughts/ comments at the end.

But before I begin, I just wanted to say how much I loved the title of this. Great work.

Page 1 – "Ain’t too much about who you seen or who you haven’t, just that you’re brave enough to finally talk to someone." This didn’t really work for me, for a few reasons. Firstly, it reads quite awkwardly, and secondly, I’m not quite sure what she’s trying to say?

Page 3 – I’m actually digging the page breaks.

Page 4 – I have a few issues with the way the first scene here is written. First off, “His attention stays on Wolfie for a moment. The Man shakes his head, lumbers away towards the Woman.” This tripped me up, because you introduce these characters as silhouettes, but then we get information about where his attention is, i.e., what his eyes are focused on, which indicates greater detail than would be available from a mere silhouette? Second was this: “Wolfie groans in pain, pushes himself to the wall. Leans against it, still on his backside -- he won’t go out this easily. His eyes lead to a nearby stairwell, find a petrified CHILD watching him, hidden.” Now, there’s nothing wrong with this action per se, but the issue I had was that you haven’t used a slug to set up the scene, so I had no idea where this stairwell is, what kind of wall Wolfie’s pushing himself towards, why this kid would be hiding. Opting against using slugs is fine, but I just felt that we needed more information about the scene setting.

Also, not the biggest fan of Wolfie's early VO.

“Wolfie, mid 40s now, sits by his lonesome...” How old was Wolfie before?

“A pair of boxing gloves materialize. Hanging on a lone hook in some piece of shit dressing room, taking us to...” I feel this transition would work better if it lead straight to the ‘Forest’, versus stopping first at Wolfie’s VO.

Page 5 – “Bounce across the eyes of WOLFGANG “WOLFIE” WARWICK, toned skin clinging to his pale but defined body as...” Errr... Wolfie’s re-introed here?

Page 6 – OK, neat reveal. I was wondering where the female protag was going to fit into all of this.

“Overflowing file cabinets filled with coffee stained papers tower against the walls. Memories of fighters who never had a chance ingrained into their records. These were the ones that never made it -- a simple footnote amongst a million more.” I loved this. Who cares if it’s unfilmable, it really established the tone of the story.

Page 7 – Real minor point, but I’d remove the second “Sickly” here, to avoid repetition: “Wolfie reaches in nonchalantly, eyes still on Sickly as she pulls out half the cash, throws it back at Sickly.”

Page 8 – “-- fire and scraping metal inch towards the heavens. The whole world coming to a standstill. Wolfie being knocked into consciousness as everybody stops.” This took me three attempts to work out what was going on. Maybe look to simplify?

Page 9 – “A WOMAN materializes, almost demonic. Her silhouette laced with the fiery blaze as she stands atop of the car. A watchful eye -- but Wolfie knows she isn’t real.” Hmmm... Interested to see how this develops.

I really liked how this scene ended, with the mystery aspect. This script is already working a lot better than your previous entry. Really glad to see that you decided to develop this idea!

Page 10 – “a hollowness surrounded her that makes her image almost nightmarish.” Should be “surrounding/ surrounds”?

“WOLFIE -- watching her from the distance, confusion written across Wolfie’s face.” I’d probably get rid of the second “Wolfie”, just to avoid repetition.

With these flashbacks, is Wolfie’s appearance always masculine?

The reason I’m asking this, is sometimes you refer to the character as “he” (i.e., top of page 11), and sometimes as “she”.

My early guess is that the Private Investigator trying to find Wolfie’s child? No idea what timeframe this is occurring in, though? Maybe give us some kind of clue, i.e., Wolfie’s age.

Bottom of page 14 – “All the love I need is this sport.” Not the biggest fan of that line, I’m afraid.

Probably recommended if you refer to ‘H’ as either ‘Uncle H’ or just ‘H’ in both the dialogue and action, keep it consistent?

Top of page 17 – ... Not sure what’s going on here? Charred lockers? So the place has been burnt? How does this lead on from the backpack of money?

OK, so someone torches the locker room and leaves the bag with money? Interesting.

P. 18 – “I want you to find the nigger, Wolfie. I want you to find him and I want you to kill him.” Why? Because he thinks this dude torched the place?

P. 20 – “You get half the money. That ain’t one dollar bills in there, Wolfie. This is... Three. Million. Dollars.” Couldn’t fit in a backpack I actually did some research before writing Blood Harvest to see how much 3 million bucks would weigh, and what it would fit in. Minor point.

P. 23 – Wolfie was sent there to kill Apollo... So why’s she bothered about these other guys killing him?

Ah, the guy slipping and subsequently falling backwards out the hospital window! I don’t know, man. I feel like that belongs in some kind of slapstick, Adam Sandler movie, not this. Maybe Wolfie could tackle him out instead?

What does Wolfie take aim with? Her fists? She came to kill the guy without a weapon? So now she wants to hurt him again, after saving his life?

P. 29 – “The events are solidified, just not their specifics.” He seems to be changing his POV on fate here? Previously, he talked about individuals being in control of their own fate, but now he’s talking about events being already “solidified”, as if things are already predetermined?

Top of p. 36 – Errrr.... wtf?! Haha.

P. 38 – I like this scene a lot.

P. 47 – De Luca: “Giordano is a spec amongst the Rubble...” This sounded too similarly poetic to Apollo’s previous line (“... mere specs in a sea of stars”). Now, the poetic lines are fine by me (hell, I normally run wild with them), but I feel that they can get too much, very quickly. Maybe have it so they are only spoken by Apollo? This would also strengthen his mythical characterisation, IMO.

“Can you hear him, you hippie longhaired bruiser, we want the money.” Isn’t this too early for hippies?

“You’re the only fucker I have access to who knows where the nigger is.” Maybe have Apollo hiding out somewhere, rather than being held against his will in police custody? If De Luca is as big time as he says he is, I’m sure he would have had information about the man’s arrest?

P. 50 – “Wolfie’s stands near the window sill...” Get rid of the apostrophe.

Sometimes you refer to Wofie in the masculine, and sometimes in the feminine. Is this intentional?

P. 52 – “a revolver loads bullets in itself, Marshall’s Bay written across it.” I have no idea what that means…?

P. 53 – “Where’s the money, De Luca? I-I-I’m completely fucked here, you understand that? Fucked!” Whose money was it? How did it end up in the lockers? Why was half of the money left? How does De Luca think that Wolfie can lead her to the money? Through Apollo? But doesn’t Wolfie’s manager still have half of the money?

I’m pretty confused here… De Luca’s after Apollo, because he thinks he can lead him to the cash? But now he thinks one of these guys is hiding him? And why was the hit put out on Apollo if he holds this important information? What’s all of these guys’ involvement with the money? They’re talking about splitting it, but wouldn’t the guys with Apollo (as De Luca believes) be able to find the cash and keep it to themselves?

At the moment, this part needs more clarity. Who are these guys? How are they involved with the money?

P. 66 – “She holsters the gun. Kisses him on the forehead.” Hmmm, the kiss doesn’t seem like something Wolfie would do, IMO.

P. 71 – “I gave you everything...” I’m a bit at a loss at the meaning of this line, mainly stemming from some of the points earlier which went over my head a bit. What exactly did Apollo give Wolfie? He lead her to the German in the library whose brains she blew out... and then?

P. 72 – Not 100% sure about what the duo are talking about here? Or what this was meant to symbolise?

P. 73 – “This is the exact same scene from the teaser, and most importantly, this is not the reason for her revenge.” OK, I really liked this. I thought the teaser scene was the reason for Wolfie’s vengeance. Nice twist.

OK, so we get to chapter 2. And as before, I really like these chapter breaks. Before I start on chapter 2, I want to comment some more general thoughts on chapter 1. There was a lot in here to like. I really dug the sci-fi fantasy seeing-your-own-death aspect, but I felt this needed to be a bit clearer, mainly with regards to Wolfie's whole forseeing. What powers does she possess exactly? I also felt that some of the major plot points (I mentioned this briefly above) needed more clarity. How did this money end up in the gym? Whose money was this? What was Apollo's role in all of this? Why did the mob want him dead if he could lead them to it? Wolfie also needed a bit more defining, in relation to her goals. She goes to kill Apollo because her trainer's blackmailing her... But then she lets Apollo live, because he says he can lead her to her son? But then she leaves him in the prison? I wasn't the biggest fan of the 'Tall Man' scenes; they weren't mysterious enough to pull me in, nor did they reveal anything new about the characters or the story. I'm guessing this will play a part later though?

And here's part 2 of the review:

P. 77 – Again with the VO’s ... Not the biggest fan. It was quite clunky and just a bit too expositional for my liking.

There’s a formatting error at the bottom of the page as well, with the dialogue appearing on the page after the character name.

P. 78 – “Wolfie’s fingers feeling the fabric. Lost in thought. An ambience surrounding the moment until...” Wolfie?

P. 80 – Wtf, the raven’s talking?!

Give us a better description of this creature, because it’s hard to visualise as it is.

What is with this raven talking?!

Aside from the talking raven, I really liked this chapter.


Chapter 3. Here we go.

OK, first off, chapter 3 starts at the bottom of the title page?

This voiceover works a lot better for me. Less philosophizing. More story telling.

... Although, there is one “and grew” too many for me here...

Holy crap, that was a short chapter. Not sure about this one. There didn’t really seem to be much of a story here. Compared to the previous chapter, at least. The mystery of the shooting at the end works, but the chapter was so short, that this didn’t have as great an impact as I had expected. The weakest of the chapters so far. Still, I’m sure that this will tie in later, though.


Here goes chapter 4.

Same thing with the formatting error at the bottom of the page.

P. 91 – This line confused me: “Her voice is soft. Modest.” As it came straight after Louis said his first line, so I immediately thought you were talking about him, which confused me, as this line talks about a girl... Took me out of the read whilst I then worked out what you meant. Also, no age for Louis?

Is that really something someone would say to a baby?

P. 98 – “I get these dreams sometimes, they scare me -- can’t imagine what she thinks either.” Where did this come from? Didn’t really seem to follow from the previous line.

This scene... Really not sure the point of it? I feel as if it could go, and we’d lose nothing.

OK, there is a point. Still, the scene felt too light for my liking...

P. 101 – “Marbled floors. Being drenched in the blood of Sienna as she holds her nose tight.” Not sure what the second sentence means?

Would Sienna not have checked on Sofia?

Why does Leo think that Sienna would know where Costa is?

P. 104 – “He finds she’s speaking to her killer.” Who finds who is?

O. 105 – Why would Leo entrust killing this guy to a woman who – I imagine – has never shot a gun in her life? Also, why does he want Nicky dead, if he doesn’t care about the girl?

P. 110 – OK, you weren’t kidding when you said that there’s some dark shit in this, haha.

Not sure of Sienna’s motives here. Will come back to this, later.

Should this mini slug be 1965?

P. 113 – “I was uh... Set to be a champion. I was set to pull this sport down to its knees wantin’ more. My name... They were gonna remember me.” ???

OK, so is Blood Wolfie’s son?

Yep, looks like he is.

P. 119 – “A red to his mouth.”???

P. 120 – I’m still no wiser as to what role Nicky places in all of this...

P. 121 – The formatting is all off for this title page???

These last two pages have some problems, for me. Firstly, how would we know that this man is Solomon, if it appeared on film? To the viewer, this would just be a random guy, who we've never met before and, thus, have no feelings towards either way?... Much like the scene of his daughter... We've never met her before. Why should she get the honour of closing the script? These are your closing scenes. Hit us with something emotive; end with one of the characters we've been following for the past 120+ pages. Also, I'm not really sure of the meaning of the final scene with the jokers? What's the symbolism here?

Stand out chapter in this section was definitely chapter 2. Chapter 3, I've already spoken about above, whilst I had some problems with chapter 4. Now, firstly, I loved how this did bring together some of the previous strands. I thought you did this really well. What I didn't like so much? Sienna's character. This is a pretty massive arc, with her turning into a real villain, man. But I didn't think this was set-up nearly strongly enough. Give us more insight into what makes her snap. Because right now, it was more of a confusing "wft?!" moment instead of a "dude, that was fucking crazy" wtf moment.

Overall comments and thoughts to follow shortly... Probably won't be too much to say, as most of my comments I've already touched upon in one of the above two posts. But there's still a few things

OK man, so I'll post up a few paragraphs to sum up my main thoughts on this, hopefully offer a few suggestions on how to take this forward.

First off, I loved some of the themes that you tackled with this. The whole idea of fate and destinies being passed down from generation to generation, this endless cycle of death and violence. It's similar to something that I'm tackling in another story of mine, so it really struck a chord. And this leads me to the first real criticism I had...: Sienna. I mean, how does she fit into this theme? Wolfie and Blood's stories are dominated by the impact that their father's/parents' choices had on them. Wolfie's hell-bent on killing her parents, whilst Blood's bitter as a result of being blacklisted due to Wolfie's actions. But Sienna...? I'm really not too sure what she was about. I really struggled with her character as a whole (namely due to some of the points I mentioned above). Also, I cannot for the life of me work out how Nicky Costa fitted into all of this. If you want to keep Sienna and Nicky in this, fine; Just clarify their roles, and see if you can find a way for these to fit into the overstall thematic story. Because I thought that Blood was a really interesting character, but we only see him at the end of his career. I would have loved to have seen him struggling with failing at achieving his dream, seeing consequences of Wolfie's choices in action.

Another big issue I had was with chapter 1 as a whole, namely the lack of clarity that I mentioned above. Some of these questions are (sort of) answered in the final chapter, with Nick Costa, but still, as I had no idea who he was, I was still left scratching my head with this. Also, who was Apollo??? Wolfie's motivation also needed a bit of work, IMO. The characters want to be boxing gods, they want to create a legacy. That's why Wolfie originally agrees to kill Apollo... But then she suddenly turns into the angel of vengeance? How is this related to her earlier goal of becoming a boxing god? Is there any way to tie the two together?

That being said, there's definitely something here. And, for what -- four weeks??? -- of work? Damn impressive. You tackled a really ambitious story here. With a few more rewrites, this could be an awesome story.

Edit:

Just had another thought, which I didn't comment on earlier... What was with this whole 'creature' subplot as well? This mainly crept up in chapter 2 (Blood's story), but was also present in some of the others. In its current form, it felt kind of shoehorned in, simply because it wasn't explored in nearly enough detail for me.

I actually really liked it, though. Thinking back on this, chapter 2 probably was my favourite of the five. And that was due to this dark, foreboding atmosphere that you created. I kept waiting for the creature to pop up again later, or to be explained, but it wasn't.

Yo, Tobes! Firstly, thanks for the read, man, always appreciated. I see this one wasn't to your liking, but then again, nobody's looking to impress on the first draft.

Let's run by some comments. I'll italicize yours as the quoting just gets messy.

Firstly, it reads quite awkwardly, and secondly, I’m not quite sure what she’s trying to say?
I think that leads into the whole slang talk, if you change the grammar then it reads nicer. "I haven't seen you before" "[It] doesn't matter about who you've seen and who you haven't, only [thing that matters is] that you're brave enough to finally talk to someone." I'll look into it.

Page 3 – I’m actually digging the page breaks.
Thanks, brother, they messed up my Final Draft permanently though it seems. I'm not even kidding, something to do with multiple action blocks and slug changes destroyed the margins of all my other work, final draft hates 2 page action lines filled with shift+enter. I'm honestly not sure what happened.

Also, not the biggest fan of Wolfie's early VO.
Yeah... Neither am I, but I decided to change it from what I had earlier since I felt my original sounded too redneckish.

Errr... Wolfie’s re-introed here?
Yeah... Hahaha, I added the scene at the start after I'd finished the chapter. Wolfie was still a man at that point, so I had to focus on where I put description and where I didn't on what she looked like.

With these flashbacks, is Wolfie’s appearance always masculine?
My bad, I was at around page 16 before I changed the gender, thus, there were a lot of he and she that just slipped past me. Especially in scenes with other females. On the topic of her appearance, I always imagined Wolfie as androgynous -- but more masculine looking, even though she’s biologically female.

My early guess is that the Private Investigator trying to find Wolfie’s child?
Okay... So I was wondering where your later comments emerge where you think the Wolfie is searching for a Child. And I just figured out that it was the dream just prior. Now, that's something which I totally didn't mean for. I'll explain this in the later comments and hopefully we can find a fix. The moment before this wasn't a flashback, it was a vision -- but I really don't want to say it by writing 'dream sequence'. Because it's not a dream, it's the future, simply disguised in the form of this cottonwood forest. She sees the death of the child, and that Wolfie needs to save her – which she obviously doesn’t by killing De Luca, which in turn has Sienna ahem, kill the child.

Bottom of page 14 – “All the love I need is this sport.” Not the biggest fan of that line, I’m afraid.
I originally cut that scene out, but re-added it since I wanted the audience to know that Wolfie claims she can see the death of this random girl, whether that's real or fake.

Why? Because he thinks this dude torched the place?
I think everything here was lost in H's dialogue. "they were chasin’ had a pirate map with a fuckin’ ‘X’ on this gym" -- this was meant to suggest that Apollo has a map that reveals that the money is at this gym. H wanted Wolfie to kill Apollo and destroy the map. I'll make it clearer.

Couldn’t fit in a backpack  I actually did some research before writing Blood Harvest to see how much 3 million bucks would weigh, and what it would fit in. Minor point.
I actually too did some research and decided to change it to a large duffel. I think I forgot to implement that into the story until we see that small scene of Nicky Costa transferring the money across. Actually, no, I remember why -- prior to 1964 I think it was, the US had notes of 500, 1000, 5000, and 10000 dollars.

Top of p. 36 – Errrr.... wtf?! Haha.
Huh? Apollo's death? I don't understand, mate.

P. 38 – I like this scene a lot.
Ha! Really? I hated this scene, I felt like it was probably one of the weakest in the whole script. Glad to see it's not too bad though.

Isn’t this too early for hippies?
Yes, definitely, nice catch. It was originally something to do with Wolfie's gender, but I thought that if people were questioning her gender, she'd probably have been caught on to long ago. So I replaced it with that quickly.

Sometimes you refer to Wofie in the masculine, and sometimes in the feminine. Is this intentional?
On that page? I can't find it, do you mean the characters referring to her as a he? That's on purpose.

Whose money was it? How did it end up in the lockers? Why was half of the money left? How does De Luca think that Wolfie can lead her to the money? Through Apollo? But doesn’t Wolfie’s manager still have half of the money?
That's a lot of questions, most which are answered by Nicky Costa. The money -- I felt as if a part of the Macguffin is that it doesn't matter where it's from, and regardless of whether I wanted the story to exist in that shape, I want to stick to that. I don't think it entirely does matter where the money came from, it was simply hidden in a hole in the gym behind the lockers. H says this earlier in the script, I think I may need to tinker with that scene as a shit load of important info is placed through it.

De Luca isn't certain that Wolfie knows where the money is, but he's certain that she knows where Apollo is. She doesn't want to give this up without exchanging Luther Walter's location -- and they can't give up Walter since Bianchi's got a hardon for Wolfie and he's certain that De Luca has her (provided by either the police or Apollo, whichever one works). It sounded a little less convoluted in my head, but De Luca simply thinks that Apollo still has the 'pirate map', whilst Bianchi knows that Wolfie will relay the information from Apollo. That pirate map is very important to note, Apollo even says that the map doesn't exist, it was a memory that was passed on (to Nicky Costa as he saves him), it's just that's what they want to cling onto it because some snivelling bastard (Nicky Costa) told them that Apollo has the map. De Luca ordered the hit, since he doesn't give a shit about Apollo, all he wants is the map. Now, this is idiotic, but then again, De Luca got his mistress pregnant and beats her regularly. Bianchi's man, Samuel says he found no map on Apollo -- thus, Bianchi obviously assumed either Wolfie or Apollo himself had it. They torture Apollo, Apollo gives nothing because he honestly has nothing (under the guise he won't talk) -- hence why Bianchi needs Wolfie. All these mobsters are families under a cartel based almost all in California. Leo plays his own part on the opposite end of the coast working with these guys. I'm actually laughing right now at how complicated I've made it be, but the explanation is just long as I tried to dumb down all the exposition in the script to a minimal amount.

Not 100% sure about what the duo are talking about here? Or what this was meant to symbolise?
It was more that -- Apollo asks Wolfie, having seen her in his dreams, whether she's ever forgotten a face. This was to basically to question  whether Wolfie was actually a complete psycho and killed for the sake of killing. As in, was he as unimportant as the however many others (dead people) on her list. Is he a cog in the machine or did she truly care for him and it was never her intention to kill him. But, as we unfortunately see, Wolfie would in fact have killed Apollo eventually.

What powers does she possess exactly?
See, this is incredibly hard to show, and if you have any suggestions, throw them at me. It's easy for her to conjure up a scene of somebody dying, and then we see that scene occurring in real life -- but I feel it just reads a bit juvenile and uninspiring. Wolfie can only see people's deaths, Apollo can see the nearby future and small fragments of the faraway future but not much else. Sienna finds guidance from her visions but she can't "see-see" the future. Nicky Costa has the ability to write the thoughts of others from the future.

But then she lets Apollo live, because he says he can lead her to her son?
It must've been that scene with the blasted girl ! With a story like this, with pretty much every character being incredibly active, throws the whole story thread into chaos because every single person wants something. This makes everybody’s motives more confusing than they should be. Wolfie wants to find the folks that left her for head, her son's still in LA, but she knows he despises her and he simply doesn't want to stay in contact. But she also knows he’s fine.

But then she leaves him in the prison?
It was more that she had to, Apollo even claims that it was impossible for them to both escape. With that reasoning too, Apollo didn't just call the guards over and dob her in, he let her escape to find De Luca. Wolfie feels as if she owes him.

P. 80 – Wtf, the raven’s talking?! What is with this raven talking?!
Haha! YEAH, DUDE! It’s possible! You should've seen my face too when I heard they could. I hear Ravens are very smart creatures. Throw a search on Youtube of a 'talking raven', you'll get a few results. Most of it is mimicking, but I don't doubt a smart few could construct their own little thoughts like parrots do.

OK, first off, chapter 3 starts at the bottom of the title page?
Oh, mannn. Great pick up, I must've screwed up the margins I think I deleted a paragraph somewhere in the previous chapter and it screwed everything up. I'm 100% certain though that I did check it before I submitted it... Must've slipped past me, oh well. I'll fix it in the morning hopefully.

Also, no age for Louis?
This was a prequel to my other 7WC entry from last year, if you lined the timeline up, Sienna comes out as a year or two, maybe a little more, older than 20 in this story, but, to have Louis be working with Leo for a decade or two, he would be considerably older than Sienna, and it would give readers the wrong image about the relationship. Rather than add exposition to cover this fact up, the reader would simply fare better not knowing the age.

Where did this come from? Didn’t really seem to follow from the previous line.
, yeah, you got me, I cut out a large portion of dialogue where I wanted Sienna to talk about her dreams. But then thought I could sneak this by.

Firstly, how would we know that this man is Solomon, if it appeared on film?
This is the whole prequel stuff poking through. Is this really that problematic? I never thought of it that way, but I think it shouldn't be too hard to fix.

Hit us with something emotive; end with one of the characters we've been following for the past 120+ pages
See, that's where I felt my intentions became blurry. The whole script deals with Wolfie doing anything and everything to kill the ones that left her for dead, aka, her parents. But in the needless bloodshed towards it, the key word being needless, she in turn destroys everything she tried to fix via her actions. A huge one being that she murders Jimmy De Luca, whose daughter, Sofia, then goes into the care of Jimmy’s brother -- with Sienna becoming her nanny solely based on this alone, lending her on a journey from her precognition that takes her to California to find Blood in desperate need of some guidance, and him being swayed by her gargantuan height in the hope of having a son that will carry on the Warwick legacy. Which, he of course does, but at the price of his own life -- he dies at some piece of shit gym by burning to death. And then his daughter, who I too funnily enough wrote another standalone 120 page script about -- ends up in the same boat as Wolfie. Aka, being shot down with nothing achieved. I'm not sure, I felt this doesn't need to be spelled out explicitly, but I think the audience should definitely understand the moral implications behind Wolfie's mayhem and uncaring decisions. What goes around, comes around, so to say.

Sienna's character. This is a pretty massive arc, with her turning into a real villain, man. But I didn't think this was set-up nearly strongly enough. Give us more insight into what makes her snap.
See, again, I knew I'd be getting this comment -- and it's a shame I did. I really really wanted to outline the fact that some people are just born bad. I even have my good friend Nicky Costa say this "The hard truth is some people are just born bad" -- this in turn goes to Wolfie's story. Is Wolfie also a bad person? Does the fact we actually see Wolfie's decisions some make her actions justified? But isn’t Wolfie as insane as Sienna? "Is the jab I throw two minutes and five seconds into the third round calculated and reasoned, or is it that I simply hope it will connect?" I think I'll let other folks also dwell on this aspect, I'm really intrigued if people get behind Nicky Costa's reasoning, and whether they agree or disagree -- which is fine, I just want folks to understand that's the basis of her character, she's evil because some people are simply born that way. A copout, I know, but that was my intention.

I think it becomes terribly obvious here that I wanted the story to be longer. A lot longer actually. I'd say I cut around 80 pages from the outline to fit everything inside. Sienna's character was meant to go to California to find Sofia's killer and, with a first hand account, guide herself through every single repercussion that came into the story because of Wolfie’s actions. She was meant to be in the heat of it to show how much suffering Wolfie has conjured. Obviously, we saw none of this because I couldn't fit it in.

Nicky Costa on the other hand was meant to be the glue that holds the story together. He had, arguably, a stronger power than Apollo. All he had to do was sort through the muck, which he did. His story was meant to deal with him sliding the building blocks into place, and what he did with the actual money -- which is kickstarting his promoting career, that directly eventually clashes with him promoting Solomon. He was a major player in Solomon's script, which turned out to be a behemoth 152 pages. I want to say his story was the most interesting as his character was the only sane out of all of them, but I had to keep him in the script since he's the reason why everything went the way it did.

Now, none of this matters at all to the reader, who could barely give two shits about who Nicky or Sienna were meant to do. Do you think I should scrap them both? Then again, I'm not sure how I'd handle the exposition burst at the end, as Nicky was the cause of all. I might see what other readers think, and if they agree, I wouldn't mind cutting Nicky and Sienna out if they don't belong.

Also, who was Apollo?
Apollo was simply Apollo, do you think this needs to be answered? He’s the second macguffin to this story to be honest. I don't think it's too complicated to think of him as the fellow that can see the future. He just is that way, by loading him with backstory, it doesn't really change the audience's expectations of him I feel.

How is this related to her earlier goal of becoming a boxing god?
Hmm, this is interesting, because I don't think Wolfie cared all that much about this -- she just cared that she didn't want her reputation of twenty five years ruined. I try and explain this a few times, she had a fuck tonne of fights, over 200, this is just an incredibly long career as anybody who follows boxing knows, she lost a lot of those fights too, so it can be assumed she doesn't care about boxing legacy as such. I can't explain it, if you look at her dialogue with Apollo at the hospital and H at the gym, I feel as if it leans more towards her claiming that she's sacrificed everything for this sport, and it would destroy her if her reputation was tarnished. I don't think it's possible for her TO become a great boxer when her history is behind her. She's aging, not too old, but a solid amount older than Mayweather who's this time actually retiring at 38. She does want Blood to become the best in the sport though, but knows she's way past any redemption herself. Her goal is simple, she wants to murder her parents. She never agrees to kill Apollo. She even tells H to go fuck himself or something or other.

What was with this whole 'creature' subplot as well?
It was basically a metaphor for Sienna being the 'monster'. In my 7WC last year, for which the 10 pages are still up I think, it was featured strongly in that, it was just a nod to my other script, but again, Sienna being a monster and all. I was going to have Wolfie see these visions of a human-like structure building itself, skin, bones, nerve endings etc, throughout her story as hallucinations -- almost like something's crafting itself as we progress until it becomes a full fledge monster in Blood’s story, aka, Wolfie becoming lost in her mind but the page count wasn't working with me so I cut it.

Anyway, thanks again, brother. Apologies for all the questions. I'd like to get to the bottom of how to make this better, maybe other folks could also build on this. I'll get to the other entries tomorrow or the day after, depending on how time fares.

Cheers!

Yo, Mo!

See my bolded comments below

Quoted from nawazm11 Yo, Tobes! Firstly, thanks for the read, man, always appreciated. I see this one wasn't to your liking, but then again, nobody's looking to impress on the first draft. Quite the contrary! Of the last three features of yours that I have read, this one was my favourite. My early guess is that the Private Investigator trying to find Wolfie’s child? Okay... So I was wondering where your later comments emerge where you think the Wolfie is searching for a Child. And I just figured out that it was the dream just prior. Now, that's something which I totally didn't mean for. I'll explain this in the later comments and hopefully we can find a fix. The moment before this wasn't a flashback, it was a vision -- but I really don't want to say it by writing 'dream sequence'. Because it's not a dream, it's the future, simply disguised in the form of this cottonwood forest. She sees the death of the child, and that Wolfie needs to save her – which she obviously doesn’t by killing De Luca, which in turn has Sienna ahem, kill the child. So this inspector scene was a dream? Is it necessary to include? It confused the hell out of me Why? Because he thinks this dude torched the place? I think everything here was lost in H's dialogue. "they were chasin’ had a pirate map with a fuckin’ ‘X’ on this gym" -- this was meant to suggest that Apollo has a map that reveals that the money is at this gym. H wanted Wolfie to kill Apollo and destroy the map. I'll make it clearer. Ah, that makes a lot more sense. Yeah, definitely look to clarify this Top of p. 36 – Errrr.... wtf?! Haha. Huh? Apollo's death? I don't understand, mate. That was just me being super shocked/surprised at his first death! I didn't mean it in a bad way Sometimes you refer to Wofie in the masculine, and sometimes in the feminine. Is this intentional? On that page? I can't find it, do you mean the characters referring to her as a he? That's on purpose. Sorry mate, shouldn't have put a page number here, as this was just more of a general observation. Whose money was it? How did it end up in the lockers? Why was half of the money left? How does De Luca think that Wolfie can lead her to the money? Through Apollo? But doesn’t Wolfie’s manager still have half of the money? That's a lot of questions, most which are answered by Nicky Costa. The money -- I felt as if a part of the Macguffin is that it doesn't matter where it's from, and regardless of whether I wanted the story to exist in that shape, I want to stick to that. I don't think it entirely does matter where the money came from, it was simply hidden in a hole in the gym behind the lockers. H says this earlier in the script, I think I may need to tinker with that scene as a shit load of important info is placed through it. This makes sense.... And I agree that it doesn't matter where the money came from, but we need to know this, i.e., we need to know that H found it randomly in a hole behind the lockers. I'd really focus on bringing as much clarity as you can to this scene because, as you correctly identified, there is a lot of info here. De Luca isn't certain that Wolfie knows where the money is, but he's certain that she knows where Apollo is. She doesn't want to give this up without exchanging Luther Walter's location -- and they can't give up Walter since Bianchi's got a hardon for Wolfie and he's certain that De Luca has her (provided by either the police or Apollo, whichever one works). It sounded a little less convoluted in my head, but De Luca simply thinks that Apollo still has the 'pirate map', whilst Bianchi knows that Wolfie will relay the information from Apollo. That pirate map is very important to note, Apollo even says that the map doesn't exist, it was a memory that was passed on (to Nicky Costa as he saves him), it's just that's what they want to cling onto it because some snivelling bastard (Nicky Costa) told them that Apollo has the map. De Luca ordered the hit, since he doesn't give a shit about Apollo, all he wants is the map. Now, this is idiotic, but then again, De Luca got his mistress pregnant and beats her regularly. Bianchi's man, Samuel says he found no map on Apollo -- thus, Bianchi obviously assumed either Wolfie or Apollo himself had it. They torture Apollo, Apollo gives nothing because he honestly has nothing (under the guise he won't talk) -- hence why Bianchi needs Wolfie. All these mobsters are families under a cartel based almost all in California. Leo plays his own part on the opposite end of the coast working with these guys. I'm actually laughing right now at how complicated I've made it be, but the explanation is just long as I tried to dumb down all the exposition in the script to a minimal amount. Dude, I'm even getting a little confused just reading this... haha. Is there no way you can possibly simplify this? Does it need to be this complicated? I know this is a classic example of "the pot calling the kettle black", as my scripts normally confuse the hell out of people as well, haha. But I would still look to try and strip this back in future drafts. Not 100% sure about what the duo are talking about here? Or what this was meant to symbolise? It was more that -- Apollo asks Wolfie, having seen her in his dreams, whether she's ever forgotten a face. This was to basically to question  whether Wolfie was actually a complete psycho and killed for the sake of killing. As in, was he as unimportant as the however many others (dead people) on her list. Is he a cog in the machine or did she truly care for him and it was never her intention to kill him. But, as we unfortunately see, Wolfie would in fact have killed Apollo eventually. OK, that makes sense... but unfortunately, this was lost in the line mate What powers does she possess exactly? See, this is incredibly hard to show, and if you have any suggestions, throw them at me. It's easy for her to conjure up a scene of somebody dying, and then we see that scene occurring in real life -- but I feel it just reads a bit juvenile and uninspiring. Wolfie can only see people's deaths, Apollo can see the nearby future and small fragments of the faraway future but not much else. Sienna finds guidance from her visions but she can't "see-see" the future. Nicky Costa has the ability to write the thoughts of others from the future. Ahhhh, OK. I got Apollo's skill, sort of got Sienna's, but Wolfie's (to a certain extent -- the demon with the wings confused me quite a bit when she first met Apollo) and certainly Nicky Costa's were lost on me. I wasn't too sure at all what was going on with the whole Nicky Costa business. Before I try and throw a few ideas out about how to rectify these issues, let me first ask you: Is it necessary for all four characters to possess similar skills? One character possessing this is a unique character trait, two's still neat, but once we get to three and four characters, it all becomes a little too murky IMO. I'm not sure about how you would further clarify Nicky's skill, but with Wolfie, maybe just show more of it. Maybe whenever she meets someone for the first time, we see a brief flash of them dying. I don't know, just an idea. That might be overkill, but I'd rather have clarity by overkill, than confusion by underkill (is that even a word??!!).

I've gotta' get back to this report at work now, so I'll reply to part two of your post later, mate

I like your style of writing even if it doesn't "follow the rules." The story flowed, I got the images, however it became too much for me. Felt like I was in a dream all the time and couldn't get out. Too poetic? I don't know. Maybe I need more sleep and I can come back to it.

The vultures of Death Valley

Title - quite like this. Not sure what it says to me, but it's provocative

Before I go on to my running comments....

Mo, may be its me, and my short attention span, but I find this style to be frustrating. This is partially because I think it is close to stunning. There is something fluid and dynamic about it. It could really fly.

But, like salt on food, it doesnt take much to really change the flavour, and become off putting., well to me This is your style, although recent shorts didn't seem to be as dense.

Here, I struggle with the read as I feel I'm almost translating as I go along, when I shouldn't.

As a whole, for me what I would benefit from is...

# A little more clarity on the scene, where we are, what's it's like. perhaps a little more reason and connection between them. Sometime they jump and I can't see why.

# clarity of what people are after. The plot in effect.

I am pretty certain I am not one of the best readers around, so take by comments as they should be, but I thought I would pass the above overview on, as I really feel you have a voice.

P1 do you need emerge?
P1 OC isn't that off camera, a TV term, rather than OS?
Chapter one...not seen that in a script before. Would it go on screen?

So we start with the mysterious young girl seeing images, visions and a sense in when we all die. Probably been done a good few times before, as has all our stuff, so without reading further your challenge will be to make this stand out. Atmospheric though.

P4 blood - I don't mind this slug, but a little detail of where we are may help
P5 quite a bit of VO
P6 woman...boxer...well I'll give you that, it's different. But don't boxers fight bare topped so the scars would be clear?
P8 baboon, or youths
P9 how does she knows she's not real?
P10 her voice...etc not sure I got this
P13 this has gone all surreal and sometimes I find it hard to follow
P23 flying teeth, almost a comedy sketch
P24 your fate is murk - I'm a bit lost with the scene
P26 spoken to the tall man. I like a bit of mystery but so far this has drifted into the I don't know what's it's about zone
P27 they left me...
P29 it's the Germans...
P35 you are the blood of flocking birds..don't say that quickly, joke aside, I'm lost
P37 I feel like I'm losing my mind ... I concur

P42 who is de Luca.. The name waste too end but without more I m not engaged

You know it's worth noting at this stage.... I have no idea what wolfie is after. All that story and I'm clueless. It's been a barrage of detail and suggestions all thrown into a salad mixer.

I'll come back to this.

Yo, Mo.  What up, bro?

I really want to give this a chance, but I'm not going to be able to, based on the style you've chosen to write this in.  I have to agree 100% with Reef in his early remarks - this is a tough slug to get through and it's almost as if you're purposely making it so.

Many of your Slugs just don't make any sense...and I think you're aware of that, but I'm not sure why you're doing it.

Not naming so many early characters is also a problem for me.  It's just tough as a reader to get much "character" out of unnamed characters.  They feel like cardboard cutouts just standing in, and that kills the read for me right there.

We all obviously have many choices in how we write and you're made your decision to go this style.  It's ballsy for sure, and at times, very striking, but for a screenplay, it lacks what I feel a screenplay really is.

I'm sure there are many who will love this style and look.  Hell, I can see real Producers giving this a look and being very impressed.  But, when you get right down to it, everything is skewed because of it...the page count, the action, even the descriptions.  Nothing will play out as it reads, and because of that, it's a mistake, IMO.

But, you got style, bro...that you do.

Best of luck with this.

Hey Mo,

As promised, here's part two of my reply! Apologies for the delay in getting back to you on this, I got caught up in reading Reef's and now Dustin's entries

As before, I've bolded my comments in your quote below.

Quoted from nawazm11 But then she lets Apollo live, because he says he can lead her to her son? It must've been that scene with the blasted girl ! With a story like this, with pretty much every character being incredibly active, throws the whole story thread into chaos because every single person wants something. This makes everybody’s motives more confusing than they should be. Wolfie wants to find the folks that left her for head, her son's still in LA, but she knows he despises her and he simply doesn't want to stay in contact. But she also knows he’s fine. Yeah man, I definitely agree about the chaos part... Character goals and motives are one thing which I (at least) feel need to be crystal clear, as there's nothing worse than a confusing character. Is there any way that you could bring Wolfie's main goal to the absolute forefront, whilst maybe cutting some of her backstory, so we don't get caught up in what's not the focus of her story? P. 80 – Wtf, the raven’s talking?! What is with this raven talking?! Haha! YEAH, DUDE! It’s possible! You should've seen my face too when I heard they could. I hear Ravens are very smart creatures. Throw a search on Youtube of a 'talking raven', you'll get a few results. Most of it is mimicking, but I don't doubt a smart few could construct their own little thoughts like parrots do. That's crazy! Haha. At first, I thought this was just some weird trippy scene lol. Makes a lot more sense now. Firstly, how would we know that this man is Solomon, if it appeared on film? This is the whole prequel stuff poking through. Is this really that problematic? I never thought of it that way, but I think it shouldn't be too hard to fix. On page, no... but on screen, it might be? Not a major point though, either way. Hit us with something emotive; end with one of the characters we've been following for the past 120+ pages See, that's where I felt my intentions became blurry. The whole script deals with Wolfie doing anything and everything to kill the ones that left her for dead, aka, her parents. But in the needless bloodshed towards it, the key word being needless, she in turn destroys everything she tried to fix via her actions. A huge one being that she murders Jimmy De Luca, whose daughter, Sofia, then goes into the care of Jimmy’s brother -- with Sienna becoming her nanny solely based on this alone, lending her on a journey from her precognition that takes her to California to find Blood in desperate need of some guidance, and him being swayed by her gargantuan height in the hope of having a son that will carry on the Warwick legacy. Which, he of course does, but at the price of his own life -- he dies at some piece of shit gym by burning to death. And then his daughter, who I too funnily enough wrote another standalone 120 page script about -- ends up in the same boat as Wolfie. Aka, being shot down with nothing achieved. I'm not sure, I felt this doesn't need to be spelled out explicitly, but I think the audience should definitely understand the moral implications behind Wolfie's mayhem and uncaring decisions. What goes around, comes around, so to say. Dude, this is fucking awesome. Seriously. But some of this message definitely got lost in the script. Especially the Sienne-Blood part, and Blood's story with his son. I could definitelly tell that it was a huuuuuuuge story that had been cut dramatically to reach the 125 page count. Have you seen The Place Beyond The Pines? Similarly themes and structure (though linear) dealt with there. I would seriously recommend trimming chapter 1, then boosting the rest of the script up. IMO, this script shouldn't be less than about 140 pages. It's a multi protag, multi generation story. 120 pages isn't right for every script. A script shoul to be a long as needed to tell the story. This is one which would definitely benefit from a beefier word count. Cut out Nicky Costa... I found this more confusing, versus adding anything to the plot. Then simplify Wolfie's story. Cut this down to nearer 50 pages if you can. Why? Two reasons. Firstly, the longer we stay with one central character, the more jarring a protag shift will be, and; secondly, we need more time spent with the subsequent consequences (especially Blood's storyline, which I felt severly underdeveloped) of Wolfie's earlier violent actions, for this message to really hit home. Sienna's character. This is a pretty massive arc, with her turning into a real villain, man. But I didn't think this was set-up nearly strongly enough. Give us more insight into what makes her snap. See, again, I knew I'd be getting this comment -- and it's a shame I did. I really really wanted to outline the fact that some people are just born bad. I even have my good friend Nicky Costa say this "The hard truth is some people are just born bad" -- this in turn goes to Wolfie's story. Is Wolfie also a bad person? Does the fact we actually see Wolfie's decisions some make her actions justified? But isn’t Wolfie as insane as Sienna? "Is the jab I throw two minutes and five seconds into the third round calculated and reasoned, or is it that I simply hope it will connect?" I think I'll let other folks also dwell on this aspect, I'm really intrigued if people get behind Nicky Costa's reasoning, and whether they agree or disagree -- which is fine, I just want folks to understand that's the basis of her character, she's evil because some people are simply born that way. A copout, I know, but that was my intention. Not a cop-out, in the slightest. I did pick up on that dialogue. My issue wasn't with the actions, but rather you'd spent the past 20ish pages setting Sienna up as this nice character, that her actions just came so out of left-field, with no apparent trigger. I feel she needs a reason for this dark side to come to the fore front. I think it becomes terribly obvious here that I wanted the story to be longer. A lot longer actually. I'd say I cut around 80 pages from the outline to fit everything inside. Sienna's character was meant to go to California to find Sofia's killer and, with a first hand account, guide herself through every single repercussion that came into the story because of Wolfie’s actions. She was meant to be in the heat of it to show how much suffering Wolfie has conjured. Obviously, we saw none of this because I couldn't fit it in. This! Fuck it, man. Beef the page count up... Or, cut out some of the earlier parts I mentioned that I didn't feel integral to the central (AWESOME!!!!) story you have here, then beef these central parts? Nicky Costa on the other hand was meant to be the glue that holds the story together. He had, arguably, a stronger power than Apollo. All he had to do was sort through the muck, which he did. His story was meant to deal with him sliding the building blocks into place, and what he did with the actual money -- which is kickstarting his promoting career, that directly eventually clashes with him promoting Solomon. He was a major player in Solomon's script, which turned out to be a behemoth 152 pages. I want to say his story was the most interesting as his character was the only sane out of all of them, but I had to keep him in the script since he's the reason why everything went the way it did. Ah, man... I'm really not sure about the Nicky character. The present day story line with him left me cold. Then his involvement in the earlier stories left me confused. Is there no way you could find a way for everything to happen, without him being present? Now, none of this matters at all to the reader, who could barely give two shits about who Nicky or Sienna were meant to do. Do you think I should scrap them both? Then again, I'm not sure how I'd handle the exposition burst at the end, as Nicky was the cause of all. I might see what other readers think, and if they agree, I wouldn't mind cutting Nicky and Sienna out if they don't belong. Nicky, yes; Sienna no. On reflection, I think the Sienna character is central to the aforementioned themes... Just give us more of her with Blood. If the main theme is about how the violence of one generation has consequences for the subsequent generations, then we need to see more of Blood and his son, and Blood and Sienna. That storyline felt massively underdeveloped compared to Wolfie's. Also, who was Apollo? Apollo was simply Apollo, do you think this needs to be answered? He’s the second macguffin to this story to be honest. I don't think it's too complicated to think of him as the fellow that can see the future. He just is that way, by loading him with backstory, it doesn't really change the audience's expectations of him I feel. Yes and no... My main confusion with his role came from my earlier confusion about the money. Maybe if you clear this up -- how the money got there, what Apollo's involvement with this is (does he actually even want the money??!!!) -- that should be enough. How is this related to her earlier goal of becoming a boxing god? Hmm, this is interesting, because I don't think Wolfie cared all that much about this -- she just cared that she didn't want her reputation of twenty five years ruined. I try and explain this a few times, she had a fuck tonne of fights, over 200, this is just an incredibly long career as anybody who follows boxing knows, she lost a lot of those fights too, so it can be assumed she doesn't care about boxing legacy as such. I can't explain it, if you look at her dialogue with Apollo at the hospital and H at the gym, I feel as if it leans more towards her claiming that she's sacrificed everything for this sport, and it would destroy her if her reputation was tarnished. I don't think it's possible for her TO become a great boxer when her history is behind her. She's aging, not too old, but a solid amount older than Mayweather who's this time actually retiring at 38. She does want Blood to become the best in the sport though, but knows she's way past any redemption herself. Her goal is simple, she wants to murder her parents. She never agrees to kill Apollo. She even tells H to go fuck himself or something or other. OK, man... In that case, I would just try to show this a bit more... because, how I read the blackmail scene with Uncle H, was that Wolfie cared about her legacy, even if it was one of a journeyman. Maybe show her seriously not caring about becoming a great? What was with this whole 'creature' subplot as well? It was basically a metaphor for Sienna being the 'monster'. In my 7WC last year, for which the 10 pages are still up I think, it was featured strongly in that, it was just a nod to my other script, but again, Sienna being a monster and all. I was going to have Wolfie see these visions of a human-like structure building itself, skin, bones, nerve endings etc, throughout her story as hallucinations -- almost like something's crafting itself as we progress until it becomes a full fledge monster in Blood’s story, aka, Wolfie becoming lost in her mind but the page count wasn't working with me so I cut it. Yeah, I remember your previous entry with the winged beast. I actually really liked the monster part here... I just felt that the metaphor was lost. Is there a way that you could make this a little easier to decipher?

If anything that I've said above is unclear, just let me know, brother!

But there was a lot to like in here, seriously. So I hope my previous comments didn't come across negative, because this was easily my favourite script of yours that I have read recently. If you simplify some of the areas which were causing me confusion, then really beef up the themes you mentioned above, you'll have something great here.

Toby.

Hey, all, gonna run through these responses and try and get a feature read tonight as well.

So this inspector scene was a dream? Is it necessary to include? It confused the hell out of me
Haha, no, it wasn't, man! The scene PRIOR to that was a dream. This scene concluded that after that war, Wolfie struggled to find anybody who could find her killers -- so she hired this guy. And as it turns out, he doesn't have a clue where they are. Wolfie was never searching for any child, I don't remember any dialogue which alludes to that either. I had her talk about who he was searching with her, but thought it was too on the nose so I cut it.

we need to know that H found it randomly in a hole behind the lockers.
I outlined a large hole in the wall in the scene description earlier, and H claims he found it in a safe corner of the room. I thought the audience would assume it was hidden in the hole as that's where the lockers were torn away. I'll try and be clearer.

Is there no way you can possibly simplify this? Does it need to be this complicated?
I think it just read that much more complicated there as I was explaining pretty much everything that happened in the first chapter. It's just giving reasons as to why characters did what. It's honestly not too complicated at all. Bianchi wants Wolfie, De Luca is exchanging her for Apollo without her knowledge -- that's it.

but Wolfie's ..... and certainly Nicky Costa's were lost on me. Is it necessary for all four characters to possess similar skills?
I honestly think it is, if you notice, all four characters see each other as pretty much the prominent figures of their visions. They're connected so to say. That's why there are chapters there -- they're all vultures. I'm probably going to work on being clear what Wolfie can do, but Nicky Costa even says in his dialogue that he can indeed see the future. "Written by my hand... I could read the future -- it spoke to me." As writers, we're always dealt these bad deals where somebody says, "Well, you should've been clearer!" and once you do, they say, "Why do you have more than 1 scene outlining what we already know". It's hard to strike a meaningful balance.

Quoted from cloroxmartini I like your style of writing even if it doesn't "follow the rules." The story flowed, I got the images, however it became too much for me. Felt like I was in a dream all the time and couldn't get out. Too poetic? I don't know. Maybe I need more sleep and I can come back to it.

Clorox -- thanks for the comment, mate. It's unfortunate you struggled with some aspects. The way I write is very dear to me, I try and make it so the actions have a rhythmic flow and images and movements take shape with the story. It's hard to explain, there's only emphasis on the focus of what we're actually seeing rather than what's happening around it. For this script, yes, I'm starting to think it was a mistake as it seems there's a lot to remember and take in.

Quoted from Reef Dreamer and become off putting., well to me This is your style, although recent shorts didn't seem to be as dense.

Hey, Bill, thanks for the comments, mate. I assure you, the style's always been the same -- except for the good old Phantom Barber, where I purposely tried to hide it. Talking about that script, I actually remember that I quite liked it, probably one of my most favourite shorts that I've written. Anyway -- I really do think the style's the exact same. It's jarring in this, especially at the beginning because of multiple reasons. Most of them relating to a lack of knowledge on what time period everything's occurring and the differing characters POVs in the first few pages. I think the problem lies more with the plot rather than the writing itself -- it simply doesn't mesh well in this script. Although I do agree, with the lack of slugs and such -- I'll come back to this when I get to Jeff's comment.

P1 OC isn't that off camera, a TV term, rather than OS?
I hadn't noticed, I usually use OS, but for some moments, I simply don't have any attention on the character in the frame, but they're still in the same scene so it's not OS then. I now use OC exclusively for everything -- I think it works better.

But don't boxers fight bare topped so the scars would be clear?
I outline that Wolfie has a tonne of scars to cover those same scars up. Easy to miss, but I don't know how to make it clearer. They definitely do fight topless -- where I write "His chest is covered with dozens upon dozens of now-healed gashes -- almost like that of stab wounds." I could of course write it a second time, but not sure how beneficial that would be. Surgery nowadays hides them really well, which I honestly could've gotten away with, but this happened to her in the late 20s so I thought I'd play it safe and made them apparent, but at the same time, it's suggested Wolfie's cut herself on the chest to hide these same scars among others.

who is de Luca.. The name waste too end but without more I m not engaged
Again, the answers are there, spelt out with the answer to every question. De Luca says a few pages later --  "I run the biggest business in the West, these other fuckers, Bianchi and
Fontana have nothing on me...............I own the cartel, you fuckin’ Wolfgang Adolf Nazi fuck."

I have no idea what wolfie is after.
Haha, again, she says it, page 26 and 27 have a conversation dedicated to what both Apollo and Wolfie want. But I agree, the script is overloaded with information, too much I'm thinking... I'll get to this in a bit.

Quoted from Dreamscale Many of your Slugs just don't make any sense...and I think you're aware of that, but I'm not sure why you're doing it.

Yo, Jeff, thanks for the comments, mate. I definitely wasn't aware of it until these comments, expanding on what I said to Bill above -- I agree. I edited the BLOOD scene by a smidge after Toby had trouble with it, but I can now see that wasn't the problem. It ties within your comment later. I should've specified that scene, but I felt as if the audience would put relevance on the 'Shoddy Apartment', even though it's just a vessel for what's happening inside. What I want them to do is focus on what was happening to the characters. But because of the nameless characters and thick scenes, it becomes troublesome, no clear location as such. It's a shame it wasn't to your liking, as I don't think the writing's all that bad.

Okay, keeping all that in mind, the script's problem seems to be that there's too much going on with too much to remember. I'm leaning towards the fact that it's because of the Macguffin -- aka, the money. It doesn't relate to Wolfie's goal, I think she even says somewhere she doesn't care about the money. Except that the other characters do -- so the whole, Apollo needs his final death, De Luca wants the money via Apollo, Bianchi wants the money via Wolfie, H wants Wolfie to kill Apollo for the money, and Wolfie wants to search for the people that left her for dead. Would taking the middle man out, aka, the cash, help the script?