Gold Fever by Monster - She is straddled with debt and must find a way to make a lot of money quickly or lose everything.  Short, Drama

Well, here's #2.

A Smelting Foundry, huh?

I'm not going to go into the issues, as I think others may.

I appreciate the effort in entering.

High-end phone? Gucci purse? Not cheap.

Ari is male correctly? Or short for Ariana? You wait until page 2 to tell us.

Something feels a bit off about Livia's first lines. I can't quite put my finger on it. It just doesn't sound natural. Maybe too verbose? The dialogue is clever, but it just sounds like a writer writing or an actor reading a script, or at least that last sentence.

Never heard of gold panning before.

"Specks," unless you mean "specifications" or "spectacles" or spec scripts.

"Colour." British?

"Pay off" is a verb. "Payoff" is a noun.

I'm not sure about these slugs. They seem too long, wordy and descriptive.

Aha! Our twist! Excellent!

"Revials"?

Quoted Text She looks in the wheel well [where] Ari [hid] the car keys.

Quoted Text Dirty with her now dirty Gucci purse

Redundant.

Quoted Text LIVIA I have some gold to sell. Lots of gold. Is it true it is three thousand per ounce[?]

Show, don't tell.

Quoted Text It can’t can’t be.

I know what it's like to be broke. Paycheck to paycheck. Disability. Bills. Bill collectors. Credit cards. Debit cards. One bankruptcy. Waiting for the VA. Coupons. Food stamps. At least one repo'd car. My family has been there and back again.

There's a good story buried in this script, and with a few more drafts and polishes, like the gold, this too could shine. Best of luck.

Hello Monster.

First, spoilers, I am no one to talk of bad formatting or misspelling. I could truly write and re-write my script and would still miss things. It's who I am as writer.

Anyway... I think you have a pretty good story. It certainly needs a re-write. Near the end you have some missed words.

i also agree that your slugs are long. Here is an example;

EXT. DIRT ROAD BY A RIVER WITH JAGGED ROCKS PROTRUDING - DAY

Why not just say... EXT. DIRT ROAD - DAY

The extra part about jagged rocks and a river could go into your action scene below. Maybe one shot showing the raging river and deadly jagged rocks.

I liked your twist ending when ARI finds out she is cashing in rocks.

Nice story.

Decent little story here. Could be something special with some polish and rewrites. You want your slug lines to be short and basic. Leave the detailed scene descriptions in the first line of action. Livia's dialogue, especially on the phone, we're pretty cringy. It was like rushed exposition dumping and it didn't have time to breathe. The twist was too predictable in my opinion and wasn't earned. She didn't have a motivation to kill him and it was pretty obvious her collection of "gold" would be worthless after she killed him. All in all, solid with room for improvement.

EXT. DIRT ROAD BY A RIVER WITH JAGGED ROCKS PROTRUDING - DAY

That's some slugline! I'd consider just having DIRT ROAD and leaving the river and rocks to the scene description.

This one feels like the internal logic is lacking somewhat for me. She's desperate for cash and he thinks fake gold is gonna work? Especially after we are specifically told she sees the gold spray paint.

And maybe this is me... but if I leave my car, i lock it and put the keys in my pocket... why does he conveniently leave the keys in the wheel well?

Anyway, the gold digger got what she deserved I guess.

I feel like your descriptions could be more visual. right off the bat you describe "missed calls from lawyers and collection agents" but how are we going to gain this info on screen ? even if the callers are called "collection" "lawyer 1" etc. I feel like there's a more dynamic way to convey this than to make the audience read words on a phone screen. and then at the end of the paragraph ari kind of comes out of nowhere -- driving ? in the back ? it's kind of unclear. it's not easy to translate the visuals floating around one's head, to make them tangible, and concisely communicable through text.

"cavorting cock-consuming collectors" goes kinda hard

gold panning is a fairly unusual subject for a film so props for being different.

the twist has potential but it doesn't feel totally fleshed out. in general I feel like this kinda lingers around things. sometimes it feels comedic but there's not a ton of jokes, it's just a little absurd. and the twist kinda comes out of nowhere -- I think another draft could refine some of this. why the hoax ? why does she kill him ? there's a good seed here that would benefit from another pass.

Dear Monster,
Winner of the best alliterative line .... cavorting cock-consuming collectors. There's certainly enough of those on our national broadcaster!!
Typo - specks
You could ramp this up
ARI  "Yeah... something like that. You gotta read the river. Look at the terrain. Look to see if there is bedrock exposed. Look over there.
They look and see bedrock going into the river and large boulders with gravel and sand between them
maybe to "You spot the signs, read the river, scope the terrain. Look for exposed bedrock."
The river waters froth and gurgle around a nearby bedrock elbow.
The gist is here - alas not the pay off!
I would re-title as Tin Pan Alibi  - all best --

i like the premise but the spelling issues are hard to ignore.

You may wish to fine tune the logline - im pretty bad at them but that one needs some work.

So the concept has legs - a woman in debt is taken gold panning and thinks this maybe an option, only to find she was fooled., or doesn't work out etc

To have her kill the other  character needs more reason - just felt out for the blue

There could almost be a metaphor in her of seeking money, being desperate but out in the woods/hills she finds peace and acceptance eg loss of house and can move on, which is real gold.

All the best

You had me going, thinking that the fake gold would be the twist. And then PANG! At first I thought Ari just slipped and hit his head. Not sure why she went all psycho on her friend.

The writing definitely needs some refinement but there is a story here. Just think it through.

Good luck, writer!

Spoilers,

This had two twists. And both, "got me".

Clearly LIVIA makes very, very poor decisions.  

At first I didn't understand why ARI would 'salt' the dig.  I think if you had had the smelter explain iron pyrite (sp?) that then would have explained to me that Ari wasn't trying to trick Livia.

Also, I don't think gold nuggets are smooth and round.

"cavorting cock consuming collector" Where was this when I needed it? Nice turn of phrase.

I enjoyed the story very much and I think a little research into the diff between gold and iron pyrite would really help sell it.  

- Don

As of this writing Gold is $3,398.82.  

My first thought here was that it's not easy to find gold. She would have to be the luckiest person in the world to pay off her enormous debt by finding gold.

Second thought was, Ari is going to trick her with the mention of the gold spray paint. The question then becomes why? Why does he want to trick her? IMHO, it's that motive that is missing here. I believe that's also where the drama should be in this story. Why is he doing this, what does he want to accomplish with this deception?

Good premise and I don't think I've ever read a gold panning story before and I've probably thousands of scripts by now, so good job there. It just needs a bit of a better think through before a rewrite. Just my opinion, of course.  

I actually like this story and it has real potential, but I have questions.  Is Ari out to pull a mean prank on Livia (her finding the gold spray paint ) and if so,why. There’s no indication of a bad relationship between them - or did I miss a clue?  And also an observation - it’s quite difficult to muster any empathy for Livia’s debt problems when she’s obviously weighted down with debt-producing items. I guess that’s why I felt no sorrow for her predicament at the end. I’m going to give this another read to see if I can answer my own questions. Nice entry for the OWC, writer.

An interesting read, but needs much work. First, I never got a sense
of the environment, the world around your characters. For example,
the drive along the highway lacked any visual feel for the countryside, the trees,
the terrain, etc. I think you stuffed too much description in the slug line
instead of sprinkling them in the action lines.

You can juxtopose the terrain with Livia's obsession with her worldly possessions.
And how she is oblivious to her surroundings.
Same with the river scene.

As Pia pointed out, character motivation is a big question mark. Why does
Ari appear to fool Livia? Is gold paint can a red herring? Why did Livia whack Ari? Out of
greed?
I kind of liked Ari. But Livia? Yikes. She is toxic in just about every way.
Ending, Livia drops to her knees twice. The easiest of fixes.
Well, the best thing I can say is that I wasn't bored. Confused but not bored.
Who knows, you might strike gold here if you dig and refine. Otherwise it's just a lot of
fools gold.