Print Topic

SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board  /  Series  /  Dead Good Advice
Posted by: Don, January 28th, 2013, 5:36pm
Dead Good Advice by Tony Maher - Series, Comedy - Losing a best friend is tough. Getting him back in your life as a guardian angel, who only you can see, is a completely different matter though. Meet Pete and Toby. 32 pages - pdf, format 8)
Posted by: Redfly, January 29th, 2013, 2:12am; Reply: 1
I only read the first few pages, but a few things popped out that seem to be worth mentioning.

A bit of the formatting seems...off?  

I don't think it's necessary to bold and underline your headers and character's name when they're speaking dialogue, or to use all caps in descriptions.  And the VO in the beginning--the exposition dump that basically explains the premise of the idea?--I personally think it'd sound better if you nixed that while jumping right into the story.


Quoted Text
PETE IS STOOD BEHIND TOBY AND IN THE MIRROR REFLECTION.


Stuff like this could be spruced up and edited a bit too....to sound more present-tense and tighter together.

And something else I noticed: a lot of the pages are only half-filled, or less.  That's kind of a waste, I think.

All-in-all, not a bad premise.  Good luck in your future writing endeavors :)  
Posted by: danbotha, January 29th, 2013, 2:24am; Reply: 2
Tony,

I got about two pages into this before I put this down. I'm assuming this is a sitcom? If I'm correct in my assumption than your formatting isn't that bad. This is correct formatting for a TV Sitcom, but for anything else, don't write like this. If this isn't a sitcom, then I'm afraid you're going to have to re-think your strategy.

The writing is incredibly bare in this one. You have no description on locations or characters and it all feels a bit empty. You've left nothing for visuals. Nothing to really spark our imagination. Had this not been a pilot episode, then I don't think I'd have an issue with it. With any other episode that isn't a Pilot, you don't need to describe things over and over, but with this you need to.

Also, the new page for every scene?? No. That completely throws a lot out the window. Remember a a certain number of pages in a script is about a certain amount of time on film. With uneven page numbering you completely throw that equation out of the window. For screenplays One page is equivalent to about one minute. With sitcoms I think it's two pages that are equivalent to one minute, but I'm not too sure.

If you show up on the boards, I'll go into more detail. Sorry if this comes across as harsh.

Dan
Posted by: TonyBerridge, February 2nd, 2013, 10:20am; Reply: 3
Thank you for your comments, I appreciate them all and in no way find them harsh. It's very hard to find a place to share my ideas so I'm only grateful for your feedback, it will help me learn in the long run. The formatting is as per the BBC writing room guidelines, that includes the page spacing which I agree does look odd.
It is written as a sitcom. As for the basic lacking of detail in the action lines, all I ever seem to read from the advice I get is to keep it vague as the dialog should tell the story. I understand your point about the pilot episodes completely though.
I'm very eager to learn and correct bad habits. I have so many ideas and even with this only as a hobby, I'd still like to at very least write correctly which is why I've joined this site. I've already picked up points to improve on which all I can ask for.
Thanks again : )
Posted by: ShauntaeAllen, February 3rd, 2013, 12:02pm; Reply: 4
I read ten pages and the formatting was off right along with some grammatical errors, I'm just not quit sure on where you're going with this.
Print page generated: May 4th, 2024, 1:41pm