First Base by Jonathan Morales (shogun) - Short, Comedy - Love is like baseball in this comedy of growing about making the first move. Will he strike out or finally make it to first. 5 pages - pdf, format 8)

Okay, I skimmed this because you have "Joseph" spelled wrong in every instance and it was very distracting. This is the main character dude, there's no excuse for that in a five page script...

And you're aware of the song "Paradise By the Dashboard Light", no?

And I'm all for using profanity when it fits, and I'm sure you thought this was funny, but Joseph's "anus" line on page 3 falls flat for me...

Sorry I couldn't be more positive. You need to read this over for format and spelling (capitalize "I" whenever it stands alone; don't use REAL LIFE as a slug), re-work your narratives ("he sees that it's a new day and changes his shocked look to a happy one" - this sounds clunky) and most of all, figure out if you're telling us a story that needs to be told.

AJR

Hey Jonathan,

I'm a huge baseball fan, so I decided to check this out based on the logline.  

I know it happens to all of us, but I have to agree with AJR above regarding the spelling.  It asks a lot of the reader to continue reading when you make mistakes like that.

That said, I would disagree with AJR regarding the "anus" line.  I didn't mind it and this may say more about me than anything else, but I did kind of chuckle at it.

Overall, I thought it was ok, but I think the problem here is that you are immediately going to run into the problem that most people will almost immediately think of the Meat Loaf song when reading this.  I could be wrong though.

One minor note on the baseball scene.  I'm probably nitpicking, but more likely than not, the OF is not going to try and throw a hitter out at first base.  It happens yes, but not that often.  I think you might want to change it to the hitter beating out an infield hit or just have him hit a single to the OF and leave it at that.

Anyway, good luck.

Craig  

Yeah you got quite a few problems in this Jonathan, as has been pointed out. I think the biggest problem though is that the whole baseball analogy in regards to hooking up has been done to death. Is there really anything new here?

Lots of spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes that need to be cleaned up. You need to CAP the names of characters when you first mention them. Also you should tell us about your characters. When you first introduce Daniella and Kenny you just mention them as if we should know who they are. Give us at least some description, please.

I think the 'fuck me in the anus' line feels horribly out of place, and a lot of the dialogue is a bit off.

But just keep writing and reading other screenplays and you'll soon pick up all of these things and your writing will improve.

Cheers,
Tim.

Craiger (re: the "anus" line),

Fair enough. However I think what I (and perhaps Trojan as well) am driving at is that the line is placed there for shock value.

What I mean by that is this: the line itself is not shocking, as we've all said and heard much worse, but it indicates that the writer clearly doesn't know his character or his audience.

Suppose he pulls a rabbit out of a hat and fixes all the problems, and someone wants to film the kid version of the Meat Loaf song. Who's his audience? Not you and me, and not likely college kids.

When he includes that line he automatically excludes himself from many viewing outlets.  He'd get an "R" rating for a 5 page short due to that one line.

It smacks of "hey, I really need people to pay attention to this, so I'll make Joseph say THIS here!"

AJR

Jonathan

This was ok, I liked how you mirrored the baseball game with Joseph experiencing his first kiss. I think as writers we are always looking out for parallels so points for that, a nice creative flourish.

I'm guessing you are pretty young, early teens maybe, correct me if I'm wrong and apologies in advance if I'm way off. The reason why I say this is the writing itself, although terse and succinct is a little basic at times, which some may argue is a must for writing scripts so...

The subject and characterisation would suggest this also, not a bad thing of couirse, just an observation.

The "anus" line was a bit of a shocker, came out of nowhere, didn't really fit the piece but then again there is nothing wrong with a bit of unpredictability.

Mispelling the main characters name was a bit distracting but I got over it, you'll definitely know it in future. What was more of an issue for me was how you went from referring to the batter as Joseph in the beginning to just "The Batter" at the end when he is making his run. There is no reason to do this here as it only confuses the reader, once you call him Joseph, keep it that way.

I liked the ending where you correlated Joseph's grabbing the boob to missing second base, again I applaud the imagination. I'd drop the theme tune at the end though, a bit lame in my opinion and too obvious.

Col.

Alright, I'm not going to go over the formatting errors because they have already been mentioned. I liked the premise, but thought the execution was terrible. Don't sacrifice comedy for story, it felt like you were trying to force jokes in certain places and it the end result wasn't funny.

Overall, there were too many grammatical, formatting, and spelling errors for me to enjoy this. You REALLY need to proofread before putting scripts up online. I've noticed that you have a habit for not doing this and soon enough, people won't even take an interest in reading your scripts.

-Chong

Cute idea with the analogy of the baseball game, and you start off immediately with a strong and clear objective, but, just to belabor a point people have already made, there are so many spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors that it was really hard to read, and it's going to be hard to advance professionally if you don't proofread your writing.

I also think the fact that Daniella kisses him makes this far too easy for your character.  It's essentially a deus ex machina; he doesn't have to face his fear and do it at all.  

I gotta admit, I smiled at the "anus" line (it's such a sudden, dirty way of expressing such a sweet sentiment and after such a sweet moment), but Daniella's dialogue, by contrast, is really bland, and I suggest spicing it up, making her more of a character rather than just a sweet girl.