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Another new writer? Congratulations for entering. A nice little story (if I understood it correctly), but it needs a lot of work. - Grammar and punctuation; - Super long dialogue and action blocks; and - Dialogue as a whole seems awkward.
Keep writing and read a lot of scripts. You'll get it.
Alex is way too melodramatic and OTN. Every scene should advance the plot or character arc, but every scene does not have to be melodramatic.
Looks like you're a green writer. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. You can't learn and improve unless you put in the time and effort. And clearly you're doing just that. Kudos for entering.
You have a strong opening here. The racing through corridors and gradual reveal of the outer space setting is intriguing. "The Boat" is a nice touch.
After that, you rely too much on dialogue and exposition. You clearly have a handle on Alex and Susan's backstories, which is great (and important). Rather than revealing their backstories through extensive dialogue, I recommend breaking it up with some added visuals. Ex: Brief flashbacks (such as Alex's experience with losing a loved one) can help make your story more effective.
As _ghostwriters mentioned above, easing back on the melodrama may also help improve the script. Subtle emotions can be very powerful when conveyed properly. Alex doesn't have to describe his experience in detail. A solemn look in his eye may be enough at certain points. This has potential to be a poignant story about grief. It just needs the "less is more" approach.
I liked the urgency of the opening though the story wandered from there and I’m not sure I really followed.
The ache is loss and Alex wants a way out. Susan understands as she too has felt loss and gives him a knife (way to go Sue…) but he decides to live instead.
Is this loss tied to the concept in some way or the character? I mean, the space station setting didn’t seem all that necessary. I’m a bit lost there and feel like I'm missing a bigger part of this story. That could be on me.
Not a fan of naval gazing monologues—less is usually more. Even better if you find a way to convey a sense of loss/emotion through action and not dialogue.
The criteria is there. Just not sure what to take from the story.
Good luck.
My short scripts can be found here on my new & improved budget website:
- A pet peeve of mine: characters should always open with their strongest argument unless there's a reason not to. He's gotta get to that ship for that syringe, but it takes him a page of back-and-forth with security to spit it out. That's what he's thinking about, that's what he wants -- the first thing he's gonna say is, "Syringe!" - Exposition is overwritten I think -- we learn more than we need to if Alex is gonna spill the beans in the second scene anyway. When you have a good emotional moment -- Alex arrives and sees that the ship has gone -- get out of its way and let your character just experience it. Consider what would be different if you cut literally all of the dialogue out of the first scene. I think: not too much. - Alex's monologue lacks specificity, I think. The way to connect us with his grief is to make it specifically about HIS grief, about what his day to day life was like -- not to try to encapsulate grief in general in a monologue verging on the poetic.
Thoughts:
- A familiar tale that's definitely sincere and properly dramatic, but lacks, as above, specificity. For Alex's choice to hit us, we have to understand what he's like as a person, what specific experiences and moments have led him to be here as we see him now. - Not enough worldbuilding around the knife. Why would the knife be the only option? Similarly, I'm fine to imagine a world where Susan would offer the opportunity that she does, but it'd be good to drop hints as to how their society got to this point. - Less is more. Less dialogue, less exposition, less high emotion. The world is made up of quiet moments, too, and I think this scripts needs to find some of those.
I like the idea of the Ache and the concept of the Boat but neither are explored to any degree of satisfaction. What we have is a lot of telling through dialogue with little to no showing. I guess this is a newish screenwriter so I’d suggest reading a lot of produced screenplays to get a feel for how it generally works and keep on writing.
-Mark
For more of my scripts, stories, produced movies and the ocassional blog, check out my new website. CLICK
Good space noir. Enjoyed the action lines but the dialog was a bit sloppy. Some run on sentences, awkward descriptions in the dialog, and a few long monologues. Mostly liked it though. Criteria was met. Sparse title and writing drew this reader in.
Imo you should cut the dialogue on second half p1 to p2, it's too static and nothing happens in the picture.
same on p3 – give us a vivid picture with movement
yeah, the script stays very dialogue-heavy all along.
You raise some emotions for sure and I think you have the sensibility to write stories with great depth and muchos intelligence.
This one was a little passive. The whole thing would work better if you could compress the long talks and, you know, put the essence of emotions from the long dialogue-blocks, into each and every spoken sentence-> as said just compress it. In other words, don't overwrite, rather bundle the power to more power. This will massively improve the drama.
You've got it in you and I like that it feels you truly want to say something meaningful to me, the reader. And that's a very strong quality in my eyes. Looking forward to your next stuff.
Alex trying to bull his way past the Security Men on page 1 should have earned him a taseing at the very least, just to add some needed action to the proceedings.
Alex’s melodramatic monologue on pages 4-5 is way over the top. This self-pitying guy needs to be put out of his misery.
OK, a man loses his twin-flame and can never regain a coherent state of mind, takes to addiction to mask the pain, and when that’s gone; contemplates suicide, but finds the courage to go on in the face of his mental adversity.
The dialog either came from a place of knowledge, meaning you know someone close who passed away (if so, terrible thing), or you’re writing under the assumption that this is how it might play out if something extremely sorrowful came to visit you.
Regardless, Alex appears to be carrying around an entity of immense weight on his back, each and every stab of the ‘medicine’ he so longs for is like picking up another stone to carry, eventually fate will intervene when the load becomes too much to bear.
ALEX: “I thought he would be different this time. I have his money. If only he left it, I would have been fine, I could have been ok”
Appears ‘he’ didn’t want Alex’s money anymore, perhaps ‘he’ is actually the saviour Alex was looking for, but wasn’t quite ready to face the demons until the forces that be sent him someone to share the pain with, a hand if you will, to pull him from his chasm of despair… Susan.
New writer. Long, overwritten action blocks, no character development, long dialog...but you wrote a story. Good. Keep writing and reading. Read lots of screenplays.
You piqued my interest here but nothing was explained. Metal is contraband? Why? Where are they? What's their world like? And Alex just came off as this totally whiney guy. That's literally how his dialog read in my head. Make us care about him. And we won't connect from just a long speach about how his life sucks...make us really feel something.
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Ache - OWC
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