People by Vikram Mohindru - Short, Drama, Comedy - They say every choice we make has an impact, which affects not just our own lives, but also the lives of PEOPLE we never met. 41 pages - pdf, format 8)

Vikram,

Your logline is kind of long, plus there's a typo. You said "head off" instead of "of."

...And you repeated the typo at the beginning of your script.

Don't number your scenes. That's for a production draft, not a spec script.

I'm not the best judge of writing quality, but I can tell that this thing is overwritten. Your opening paragraph is meant to describe a busy city, but instead of writing "a busy city" you wrote a four-line paragraph describing what the people are doing.

Descriptive is fine, but screenplays should stay relatively concise. Also, make sure your action lines are never redundant. "A busy street" conveys just as much as "People walking around, dropping their kids to school, quarreling, meeting and greeting each other, jogging..." etc.

I'm not a fan of your scene transitions here... While there aren't really any rules against them, I think DISSOLVE TO is distracting, especially when used this frequently. It reminds me I'm reading a script, and takes me out of the story... Same with SMASH CUT, which is worse, IMO.

Also remember to CAPITALIZE character introductions.

And use parentheticals sparingly. "Restless tone" is not good. Only use them when necessary.

You used BEAT a lot, too. Like I said about the scene transitions, they take you out of the story, and should only be used when necessary.

Forty pages is long for a short. I think your could easily trim this down to a reasonable length... tighten the action lines, trim anything that isn't relevant to the story.

Hope this helps.

I agree with everything said above.  

Your log line isn't good at all.  They shouldn't be longer than two sentences really.  Also you over creamed a ton of comma's.  

Quick example - They say every choice we make has an impact, which affects not just our own lives, but also the lives of PEOPLE we never met.  Keep it simple and to the point.

Lots of things written can be cut down a TON.

VOICE OVER = V.O.
Your descriptions for almost everything can lose a few lines.

I have more but I don't want to fill the page with a bunch of repeated examples.