Blank by Steve Fauquier - Thriller - A Daughter's car accident sends her Father into a desperate attempt to track her down despite being informed of her death. 99 pages - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Steve, I don't recognize your name, nor have I seen posts from you, which is probably why you don't have any reads on your script.  It's a Quid Pro Quo world here at SS, and to receive, you need to give, so jump in and read and comment on other's work.

I read your first 16 pages.  For some reason, I have to say, I like your style...it comes off as real, and your dialogue is well done and believable.  I truly liked Allen and Trish, and even Dr. Marchmin is well done.

BUT, there's just way, way, WAY too much talking with nothing going on, onscreen.  This would never work in an actual movie, and that's too bad, because when Trish died, I actually felt sad...it really moved me the way Allen spoke to her at the funeral, the way he and the Dr. conversed.

You have to cut this back and/or show something interesting while the back and forths are taking place.

You also need to be weary of using the verb "is".  It just doesn't usually read well in a script and is so easy to get around.

You also have a shitload of orphans running around for no reason, which wastes space.  You have these both in your action/description lines and your dialogue.  Just way too many. The script is already running way too long, but that's because of all the dialogue - your first 16 pages would not be nearly 16 minutes of film, and orphans only make this worse.

Look at your action description lines. The vast majority begin with a character's name, or a reference to a character (he, she, etc).  You want to try and change this up when you can.

Finally, try and stay away from repetition of names or obvious references to characters.  When you have only 2 characters in a scene, you don't need to continually use the other person's name.

Little things go a long way to making a script stand out.

Your dialogue is very well done, and your characters seem real and likable.  Now, you need to get this in shape, where peeps would want to sit through an hour and a half, watching...but first, you need them to sit in front of their computer and read the whole thing.  As it stands, I'm not going to do that, based on the very little action and too heavy dialogue.

Best of luck with this and hope this helps.

Steve,

Are you on the board? I'll have a look at your script if you show up.

Frank