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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board  /  Drama Scripts  /  Only Human
Posted by: Don, October 27th, 2009, 7:10pm
Only Human by Lee Reid and Garrett Reid  - Drama - A Young Man’s bizarre death march. Lee is Terrorized at a young age..by his alcoholic maniac stepfather.. Wild Turkeys save his life! Lee’s First Loves. Then Vietnam… The two hundred million dollar US Army Payroll Heist. Cambodia border..Lee must fight back and murder his own officers. (Small portion of the movie is combat action.) 123 pages - doc, format 8)
Posted by: jackx, November 1st, 2009, 3:25pm; Reply: 1
Some notes.  Odd logline, figured this was gonna be hit or miss from your logline.  Turned out to be mostly miss.
Need a title page, not sure we need to know yall are father and son.
Don’t need the break down of a Turkey’s flight capacity.
Way too thick action paragraph, looks like a novel.  Break it down, and show don’t tell.
And explosions and gunfire don’t pollute airwaves.
Why say Driver (Jon) when you can just say Jon?
The Lt. needs to be described as fat earlier.
A lot of the grammar is off, run on sentences and such.  Break your giant paragraphs down, then work on them line by line.
You like throwing in info in parentheses, this should all either be said previously or taken out.
Need to fix the formatting, get a free program from somewhere, such as CeltX
Need to get rid of info we cant see, such as (drunken madman from hell).  Figure out how you want to convey that to the audience, then just show that.
Gave up around page 6 with the unnatural dialogue between mother and son.  You're using dialogue to tell the story, so the two are speaking like narrators, not like people.  Show us what's going on, dont just tell us.  
Also break everything down, its way too dense.
All this makes a reader give up on the story, which for all I know could be fabulous.  It certainly sounds interesting.  But noones going to get that far into it as it is.
I would be happy to continue to read it if the formatting and writing were cleaned up.
Good luck with it.
Posted by: rendevous, November 1st, 2009, 5:04pm; Reply: 2
Had a quick look. There's somthing here but... Jackx has pretty much hit on most of the points.

Biggest problem is the novelish aspect and the format is all over the show. Word is rubbish. See my post on Page Numbering.

"FILM SCRIPT:   �ONLY HUMAN�
ACTION/DRAMA (Based on a True Story)"

It's a bad opening gambit. Fine for friends and family but this SS lot know what they're at. You're pissing 'em off and you've barely started.

Hey, I'm not saying it's bad. Just read Jackx post carefully and get some software. And read some scripts. Not necessarily on here (although my To Be or The key script are rather good) but read pro scripts. You'll learn a lot.

Dear Mr. Hicks.

Firstly, sorry that you left us. You are very much missed. Mr. Leary has been fucking rubbish since you premature departure. Actually he may have been doing that to rubbish. It wouldn't surprise me.

I apologise for my whoring of my own work. I just can't help it. I do remember you were fond of flogging your own gear. It's just every time I do I think of you. Oh Baltis, if only I had your salesmanship you shameless rocking geezer you.

R.I.P. Bill.


Sorry.

Re
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