Team Leader by Andrew Halldorson - Action, Adventure -  The story takes place in Iraq and is a romantic adventure between a 20 year old girl who went to work in a war zone to get away from her life in the states and a 40 yr old security contractor. "How is it that in an instant you can decide to take someones life but can't understand that in an instant I can know I love you forever?" is the question Nicole simply asked him. 223 pages - rtf, format 8)

There are two things right off the bat that are going to deter folks from reading this script.

1. .rtf format.

2. 223 pages.  Without even looking I can tell you that your script is drastically, drastically over-written.  But just to be safe I went ahead and took a look.  And yeah -- drastically, drastically over-written.  You're naming songs, your action/narratives are much too long (they should be kept to four lines or less -- a problem which will actually be helped if you were to simply widen your margins to industry standard, and that goes for your dialogue, too) and your formatting is all over the place.  Add all these things together and what you have is a whole bunch of distractions which will turn a reader off the instant he/she opens the script.

Sorry if that takes the wind out of your sails, you've obviously put a lot of work into this beast, but as a spec writer, how your script looks on paper is just as important as the story itself.

Keep at it.  Best of luck. :)

Damn! 223 pages? Andrew, anything over 120 is pushing it.

Part of the problem may the the margins. Get some screenwriting software, because right now, the formatting is making the script longer than it should be. (Not to mention a little ways through, the formatting changes...)

Still, it's way too long. To me it looks like you're going for a fast paced action film, so cut this closer to 120, or better yet, 100-110. It'll definitely improve your pacing, as well as make people more likely to read the whole thing.

Don't just shorten/cut scenes, but also look for redundant lines in action and dialogue that could be cut. Keep it concise, to the point. Your logline looks interesting, but there's no way I'm going to read 200 pages. Sorry...

Good luck on the rewrite.

Will

Quoted from Lon There are two things right off the bat that are going to deter folks from reading this script. 1. .rtf format. 2. 223 pages.

3. Loglines that suck.