One Week by Ben (alsoben) - Drama - A young unmarried couple, with a young child and another unborn, intend to stay with the young woman's in-laws for one week leading to a tense and furtive trainwreck. 69 pages - pdf, format 8)

Just checking out some stuff without reads.

Logline's, offputting, and I thought the read would be worse as a result, but it wasn't so bad.

Reubin is spelled Reuben. You spell it correctly later on.

I think there's some potential in this, but parts of it were like walking in treacle. Take this line:

EXT. HEINES HOUSE - DAY
An older but well-kept house. Reuben and Luce’s car is
pulled up on the curb. Reuben hugs Stella at the front door.

Somehow, I found this tricky to take in, and I think in part it's due to the back-and-forth nature of the description - going from the house to the car, and back to the house again. If we can see the house, we can probably see Stella and Reuben, and they are most likely to draw our visual attention -- so logically:

EXT. HEINES HOUSE - DAY

Reuben hugs Stella at the front door (of) an old(er) but well-kept house.

Reuben and Luce’s car is pulled up on the curb.

I liked the potential dynamic between these people - it's well step up for conflicting relations.

I felt that the dialogue was more studied and carried off better than the descriptions.

Hope to see you on the boards.

Simon

Why is a 69 page script in the shorts section?  As insane as it is, we actually have a number of theatrical releases that are less than 70 minutes long recently (without beginning and ending credits).

You used "young" 3 times in your 1 sentence logline. That's a pretty bad omen that will keep me far away.

Don - thanks for putting this up.

SiCool 07 - Thanks heaps for the feedback. Yeah, the descriptions - I'm using to having to dial down ardent description so I tried my best to be as boring as possible in this - I guess it made me underthink them. Thanks, my favourite (and most concentrated on) bit of writing this was the dialogue, and the conflict.

Your critique has been really helpful, by the way, with the suggestion on how to describe the scene.


Dreamscale - Ugh, the logline - it was rushed. If I can change, I'd love to know how. I hope you reconsider giving this a read. And I did submit this to drama, but I don't mind.