The Dog House by Daniel Clune - Comedy, Dark Comedy, Action, Horror - A crafty older woman with issues and a dark secret hidden in her basement, teams up with her hit-man son to take revenge on drug traffickers who have kidnapped her neighbours.  116 pages

treatment
summary

production:Main cast is 6, there are few locations and minimal effects. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hi Daniel

I have read the first 20 pages of this. I made some mental notes as I went along so I'll try and remember them now.

First of all, well done on hammering out a feature, it's not easy.

This reads as though it is a first draft, by that I mean, It's messy.

For example the formatting of (CONT'D) - sometimes it appears as CONTD - not consistent. oh and you use CONTD when it is not needed as a different character spoke before them.

Randomly someone called MIKE has a line of dialogue, it looks like this should be Phil's line as no character called MIKE has been introduced or has any other dialogue in the scene. (In a rewrite have you changed a characters name from Mike to Phil?)

The dialogue is quite on the nose...

Quoted Text PHIL Prentice will take flights when she receives her authorization. But she's also nurse, she can help with any medical issues at the new academy. YOUNG PRENTICE I'll be moving to Mexico when my tenure at the hospital is over. PILOT I look forward to working with you.

This for example, doesn't feel natural to me.

Other stuff:
- "YOUNG PRENTICE meredith (22)" whole name should be caps and no need to tell us shes young, you have put the age.
- "Recreational vehicles" - what's a recreational vehicle?
- you have put action in parentheticals, action should go in the action block
- "Skydiver types mingle" - what's a skydiver type?

There are other things in there that are messy and make the read harder. Cleaning up these things will bring the story to the foreground.

The story, I was enjoying it - If the writing is cleaned up I would read the whole thing. I like the Prentice character (although I don't like the "shit balls" slogan she keeps saying).

Good luck to you with the story.

Oh I have one more thing - Why are all women in screenplays "pretty"? This is not aimed at you personally, but all budding screenwriters, please please please use words other than pretty. I am sure I am guilty of this, but it wasn't until I read loads of scripts recently it became apparent how overused this adjective is on female characters.

Regards

Matt

Hi Matt

Yep, massive rookie mistake on my part, I uploaded a draft script by mistake.

Your other feedback was valuable as well. I did not know about the action in a parenthetical rule and the overuse of pretty is good advice.

Thanks for the feedback and I have rectified according to things you pointed out.

Regards
Dan