Amelia by Gillian Fu (gipattinson) - Short - A flashback of a romance between two very different people. 13 pages - pdf, format 8)

Gillian,
         Thought I'd give this a read and post a comment. This one just doesn't work for me. Your page long opening doesn't have enough of an impact in therms of premise and context. I found it disorientating. Tristian's VO didn't advance the story for me. While I can see what you're going for, I wish you'd just stick to the core story.

The repeated pop culture references, cheesy. You take a massive bite at trying to explain love in page 2. I don't see the relevance of the schoolgirl and why she gets a page. It's exposition. She seems to be there to chip in feeder lines.

No need to cap your characters all the time, just when you intorduce them, followed by a brief description. Stick to the present simple in your scene actions. You also have a needless line of white space between your characters name and dialouge.

The exchange between Amile and Tristian at the dentist office is very contrived, long and awkward. You need to tighten that up

'TRISTAN and AMELIA tumble out of the building.' Are you saying they physically fall out of the building and why?

Dialouge is very on the nose, which makes Ameila and tristian sound cliche and 2 D.

This boy meets girl, boy loses girl, then meets her again needs more. You really are telling us the story. Tristian's VO is too much. I don't understand the impact of the dentist's office. They part, even they they love each other, not a word is said between them, they don't keep in contact, write, email, phone make plans etc and then just meet up randomly back at the dentists? I'm having a very tough time believing that. You have to experience true love and loss before you can write about it with a ring of truth.

There needs to be more meat on the bones of this story for it to work.

I'm going to agree with most things Eoin said, except the vo's. I think that's where the strongest writing in your script is.

However, the action lines are weak and over-written. There also isn't enough spice. It's a fairly cliched love story.

Overall, it was just OK for me.

This is a mess. Cetainly didn't open as a PDF for me.

Presentation, Gill. Fu? Sounds Chinese. I'd love to read a script by someone from China. Especially if they are female.

No logline? Okay...

Some of this is good.

Space it. The blank white space on a script page is important. As is formatting.

Do it right and you look like a pro. Do it wrong and it looks lazy.

Still some of your script is interesting. Read how it's done. You never know.
Keep writing.

R xo

Eoin: Thanks for the suggestions, really taking them in.

Violent Josh: I'll work on them.

Rendevous: Sorry about that. But I'm not from China anyway.