Declaration of Love by Calvin Peat (Darn It's Hot)  Short, Romantic Dramedy w/ music - With love at stake, a man desparately races against time to stop a woman from boarding a plane. - pdf, format 8)

Weird story à la Shoot'em All. I didn't get all, but there was a drop of romance, no drama (except a shooting, but can't you call that a drama?) and a final song. A bit James Bond's parody .

Not in my favorites. Sorry.


BTW, this is not PDF but Word...

DECLARATION OF LOVE

Pros – Premise. Spies! The gun fight at the hotel was well written.

Cons – "Movie-ish” dialogue: “But today, I averted the end of the world” and “Aww… that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Comedy – Not much. Not much for witty repartee.

Romance – Not much. Not enough time with the bullets flying.

Lyrics – At the end of the story reminiscent of the traditional James Bond opening sequence.

Writer – Good misdirection on John going to airport to declare his love for a woman. Well, he did, but he had a gunfight on the way. At only 7 pages for this one, I would have liked more to the story.

And fix the dialogue.  Hold it. That may be part of the attraction of this piece. Interesting.

Criteria – Action oriented. Not much comedy. Or romance.

Gary

OK, not much to say here, cause you obviously didn't really try and follow the challenge at all.

Opening is so full of holes it's crazy.  He runs onto the runway?  Yeah, right.

Sorry, but this doesn't work.

Good attempt at something different but it just fails. Too much action and not enough snappy dialogue.  it brought to mind True Lies but without the humour.

Style was good despite the Word format.

One question? If you knew a guy who had a private plane, and who would drop everything to come to your aid, why would you need to spend money on airfares?

John indiscriminately shoves some bills into the hands of the DRIVER (40s).

                       JOHN
           The airport.  Now.  Go!

The driver nods, pulls away sharply, and floors the gas pedal.

                       DRIVER
           Got a good reason to hurry,
           I suppose?

                       JOHN
           A woman.

                       DRIVER
           Yeah.  I can tell you feel
           strongly     about her.

This is a great example of what not to do. Why? John's first line just does not ring true. Strike one (and finding out later that he's some big time assassin? He should be whizzing around in an Austin Martin). Taxi driver don't talk right. Most are not American, unless this is a small town, which I'm guessing it's not (in major cities I have YET to get a taxi driver fluent in english). Strike two. John confesses why to the taxi driver right away? Strike three. Taxi driver saying that last line, if there were four strikes, that would be it.

The Taxi driver should have been pissed? He floors it and says "Hang the fuck on, ass hole!"

You lay it all out right away, taking suspense and chucking it out the window. You've peeled back way too many layers, and it feels awkward the way it's done.

There is no subtext going on, the dialogue reveals all. Frustrated guys keep it in when it comes to women, unless they're drunk to the gills.

And then John running past customs like that? Airport shit like this has been done a bazillion times, so much so it's parodied any more. But now days? John'd be on the floor with cuffs on and a gun to the head faster than he could say

           She's gone...I can't stop her...


He slides his bag across the floor to his right, then turns to his left and shoots the chandelier hanging above the stairs.  It smashes onto them, disintegrating into thousands of pieces.

THEN...

He whirls right again, comes round the pillar, and takes out Lilah before she can get her bearings.

Sarah heaves a sigh of relief.

...Okay, so the chandelier smashes onto them, but they's like just fine?



I get you're going for some action, but it's a Sunday afternoon off-channel movie cut out.

OK, most everyone has already hit on my comments already but I'll throw my two cents in.  

The whole bit about him running through the airport, even past security, without being stopped was totally unrealistic.  And to top it off, a customs official finally catches up to him....and gives him a love pep talk?

I felt the character of Stuart was a bit unneeded.  The only reason he was there was to provide dialogue (which was a bit on-the-nose that entire scene) on John's unknown job.  This piece of information could have been presented a little more creatively.

You did peak my interests with the whole airport scene.  It was very well written and I completely dug it.  The "that's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me" line was a tad cringe-worthy.

But, I would still give the script a solid 3/5 for the awesome spy action scene.

Everyone's said how it couldn't happen in an airport, and it couldn't.
I think it could have worked at a train station though.

I liked the chase, and the spy stuff.  It was different, and I wasn't expecting it.
I would have liked to seen some comedy in there though. Since they did go by plane, maybe they could have used different types of weapons that would pass through the machines without being detected. An explosive bra for example. ::) ;D
You did have romance, and you did write the lyrics... so I think you did pretty good for a OWC.

Cindy

Some of the action was good here but the whole thing starts as a mystery and ends as a mystery.  We don't know why he was after Lilah.  We don't know who he is.  His girlfriend doesn't even know who he is and what he does.  

I think 911 ruined your airport shoot out scenario.  Not sure it would be that easy and if Lilah had something that was going to destroy the world why wasn't national security in on it?  Seems like something that huge should have more than one guy on it.

Your spacing is a bit whacked out.

I don't think that this rings true to life. The way the taxi driver says, "I can tell you love her a lot". Or something to that effect.

I do think that if you pursue writing action, you will probably do well. It seems to me that writing action is a very difficult thing to do because it can come off as:

They did this. This hits that. That hits this.

You're not on with the theme, but you did in an effort for the challenge and that's a good thing.

Sandra

This one was sudden both in the way it started and ended.

so, I get it he is some kind of secret agent, or a body guard?

It's missing a whole background story to it, it reads like the end of the feature.

Well written, I think. But I wanted more.

Quoted from khamanna This one was sudden both in the way it started and ended. so, I get it he is some kind of secret agent, or a body guard? It's missing a whole background story to it, it reads like the end of the feature. Well written, I think. But I wanted more.

Good comments here.

There was a kind of abruptness that felt forced. It's hard to say until
a person gets really good with the crits.

I know the dialogue was wrong with the Taxi driver. There's a real
balancing of logic and character motive and theme when it comes
to writing and if I had the magic formula, I'd give it to you.

The only thing I can say. Is just keep writing and most important:

Experiencing!

Just do it.

Was that a Nike commercial?  ;D

You came at this from the angle of:

Show the audience this guy in a hurry.

Don't tell them why.

**And that's good, but there's just more we
need to get into.

Show a bit of this man as not a life-like character,
but real and living.

What makes him tick? I think it's critical that
we learn to think this through. And it's hard.

As I said, I think I saw a strong penchant for action
writing. If you're good and persist, I think you might do
well purely for the reason, that I don't think (and I might be wrong)
there are a lot of solid action writers.

Seems to me, it's a very specific genre and calling and one
needs to fit within that mold.

Hope this helps.

Sandra

youre dialogue in the beginning sounded true. I think you rushed the end, as I did.

Unique story for this OWC. I wanted to like it, but not enough happened for me. Gun fight at the okay O'hara.

So he's an asssasin I take it.

That was five pages including the lyrics and it shows. There is not nearly enough information for the story. We know nothing about John, Sarah, or Lilah, or why they might be shooting at each other. I'd hate to fly out of those airports -- the security is laughable. I doubt a rich buddy would let you onto his private jet if he has no idea what you do. Which one did John try to stop, Sarah or Lilah? The plane trip was a chance to build suspense -- will he make it on time? What happens if he doesn't? That chance wasn't taken. And how did John learn at the last minute that Lilah was out to get Sarah (or that Sarah was flying into danger)? More background please. Bring down a chandelier with a hand gun? Unlikely. And how does he "take out" Lilah when she's wearing a bullet-proof vest and he couldn't do it the first time? There are just too many problems with this script.

Well, it took a direction that I had not expected! It actually reminded me a bit of "True Lies" - when Arnie's wife discovers what he does for a living! I am afraid that the song at the end just brought to mind "The Simpsons" send up of Bond though.

I prefer the OWC scripts that try to integrate the song into the story, so am not keen on the way this was done.

The dialogue wasn't very believable (but then again, was it meant to be - this is hardly a believable story). Someone says above that it felt like it was from a movie and maybe this was deliberate?

I would point out that, in this day and age, running past check in like this would almost certainly get you shot! I didn't see the point of having two custom officials - why not merge them into the same character?

If he's a secret agent, why did he need to call in a favour to get a flight? I mean he must have access to planes and the ability to get onto flights at a moment's notice.

I can't comment on formatting as it was a rtf document - my software tends to knock these about a bit when they open them, so any faults might be on my side. I would always urge the use of pdf in saving scripts for this very reason.

The twist was unexpected and you are to be given a pat on the back for that, but otherwise, I didn't feel it lived up to the promise that this would suggest the story had.

Overall I liked it. It had some good action moments, especially the chandaleer bit. Not the most romantic Ive seen, but I could see the female lead being wooed by her bf saving her life in epic circumstances. Would have liked to see more of a backstory to the girl though. Keep up the good work.  

http://www.simplyscripts.com/scripts/dontleavemealone.doc