All Hallow's Eve & Adam by Monster of the Id - Short, Horror - Holden is shy and a good student sans athletic ability, hence he is either ignored or bullied in High School, yet, he is determined to kiss his Dream Girl at the Halloween Fun Fair. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Like the idea behind this but found myself re-reading a large chunk of it. Granted, I am not the brightest bulb, but I tend to think that you have a lot of characters to keep track off - also your action sentences lacks some rhythmic. Anything over four, it’s a good idea to break those paragraphs up.

Like I said, I liked the idea, but with the title  was hoping for more. Decent effort. All the best.

Ghost

Hmm, you can't really have an INT/EXT for the Hospital room, because even if it was in the hallway it'd still be INT, and in this case the action seems to be all INT anyway. Also, Hospital rooms aren't generally homey, especially if the occupants are hooked up to IVs and beeping machines.

Page 4, the Chauffeur bit is a little confusing, Abigail seems to appear from nowhere and I'm not sure if she's tapping the Chauffeur's shoulder or Holden's?

CUT TO tends not to be used in scripts too much these days as it is implied by the fact that a new scene starts and the Montage isn't normally formatted like that...check out Triottier's Screenwriting Bible for a couple of other ways to do it.

Afraid this had lost me by page 6.

Well done for getting one in.

I understand the underlying character arc and the lesson to be learned, but I have to say I got tired reading it.  Very dense and heavy blocks of text became wearying.  Good story, that would a make good short story, but needs streamlined to be read as a script.

Writer,

Okay. Um…. I’m sure there was a story in here somewhere, but this was way padded down with so much unnecessary reading that I really had trouble following along, at some points unwilling to follow along. For that, I’m sorry, but there was just so much going on I really couldn’t figure out what this was all about and I feel you probably wanted to go on another five pages or so! Anyway, get to the essence of your script, trim the action to three lines or less and make it a quick and insistent read that captures us and won’t let your reader put it down. However, great job on entering!

Steve

This script wins for "Best Title" IMO.  Very catchy.  I liked the premise of "be careful what you wish for" because as we all know...sometimes you get it.  I think I would have enjoyed more dialogue to the story vs. all the set-up sequences, but it's still a good cautionary tale and a good base story.  Thanks for sharing!

Not a bad story even if familiar. It is however, IMHO, way too big for ten pages. Too many characters and too much going on. My suggestion would be to remove everything around this story until you're left with just the bare bones and then rebuild from there. Pick smaller less busy locations with fewer characters. I would also trim the dialogue because it's too much of it as well. Lots of exposition...

Finally, please get rid of the SOUND: BELLS type thing. I don't believe I've ever seen it done that way. It's not necessary and just adds extra words to read. A simple BELLS ring is enough. We understand you want to emphasize sound.

Not a bad story, just needs to be trimmed and maybe told from a different angle to make it seem a little more fresh.

This one's got a lot going on for a ten pages script. The dialogs need another pass. The action lines need some editing as well. There's some issue with the narrative since it's confusing to clearing understand what is happening. Like the bit involving the chauffeur, I had to read it thrice.

The idea is decent enough, however, the execution needs some work.

Good luck.

Thought I’d give this a read and comment as it seems to be lacking ‘the love’ some of the other scripts are getting.

Some good news and some not. The good news is you know how to write, and the lexicon and format you chose to hit home the flavor of your thought process appears unique to storytelling… but useful for a long-drawn-out script, one that is loaded with backstory and 3-dimensional character arcs, not so much for a short.

The not so good news is this script is disjointed and complex to follow for 10 pages. It could definitely be pared down a bit… with a Ginsu. For shorts, think ‘less is always more’.

For a Halloween script challenge a fun way to approach the story is to pick a character or two and roll with a story that’s happening now. If you need a little backstory for characters, then try to incorporate a personality trait that’s on par with a trope or a meme, one that’s become common knowledge, so you don’t have to linger in the past for too long.

Of course, for Halloween challenges and such it’s a fun way to write scripts, but you want to avoid doing that consistently. Anyway, I think you get the gist of what I’m saying. Hope some of this helps, keep writing, the chops are there, you just need to leash it in a bit.