Untitled Western by  Rich Merrill - Short, Western - Old west. Man walks into general store. Man is not welcomed. Man is identified as a hired killer- maybe. Cut to Saloon, where a group of men by the man hired killer is supposed to kill are lodging. Man sneaks into saloon to meet an old acquaintance. - Entry for the January '06 One Week Writing Exercise Thing - doc, format 8)

Ok, this one has some problems. First of all, it feels like you took a full length script and posted the first 15 pages of it. Nothing much happens during the whole 15 pages except a bunch of expositional setup. You introduce a slew of characters that never do anything. You have a decent reversal that comes up just as the story ends. This whole thing feels like an incomplete story.

The formatting is a bit off too:

First, you need to double space between the sluglines and action paragraphs. Also, your action paragraphs are too long. Break them up into maximum 4 line segments.

Even if the dialogue continues from the same person, you need to head it with the character's name.

(sighs) would be indented about halfway between the character name and dialogue margins. In what you have here, it would sit at about 2.2 inches or so.

We get a MEDIUM shot? I'm reading a screenplay getting no shots.

I also might comment that you cheated the length a little bit. Your dialogue is about an inch and a half too wide compressing it into fewer pages.

If Katherine's history is important, it doesn't belong in the action paragraph. Show, don't tell. If you can't see or hear it on screen, don't write it down.

I would say take the "Untitled Western" and finish it. Repost it when you're done.

Eh? It was very boring. (Sorry) and not all that good. I agree with George about it feeling like the first 15 pages of a long script.

If more was added then it would be good but just how it is now is not good.

I too am sorry to say that I didn't enjoy this. I think George says it best with regards to how it could be improved upon. It just didn't keep my attention and the fact that the formatting was off, didn't help either.  

I'll look out for a rewrite and give it another squiz then.

Andy

It was long, it had interesting characters but it had no readthrough flow.
The dialogue was good as was the writing of the rest. But the story didn't got my attention that much, it had me going for 7 pages from then on I slowed down.
Those ending pages seemed like unfinished business.