Screensaver by Chin Ndelemai - Short - What if you were given the chance to choose your eternal dwelling place? Heaven or Hell? Which would you choose?  6 pages - pdf, format 8)

Hello Chin.

So first off, you'll wanna keep your action lines active instead of passive.  "A man is sitting..." could be converted to, "A man sits..."  This makes the read flow better.

You'll also want to keep your action blocks at four lines or less.  Try and group them by central ideas.  For example, the first block could describe the actual room while the second could describe the man behind the desk, even if the first block is only a couple of lines long.  This will keep the read at smaller, more manageable chunks instead of giant blocks which is easier on the eyes IMO.

I suggest naming "the man" as your use of pronouns can get a bit confusing at times and hinder the flow of your read.  Even if we never hear the man's name, giving him a name will put him on a more personal level with the audience thus building more rapport.  This is just a suggestion though as "Man" is very generic in spite of the omnipotent angle I think you're aiming for.

Steer clear of parentheses unless ABSOLUTELY necessary.  To many and you start to encroach on director/actor territory and I hear tale that it's pretty annoying when writers get too pushy with how their characters should act.

That parenthesis in the middle of Man's dialogue would be better off in an action line if need be.

"How...do you know my name?"  Man already addressed Fredrick by his name earlier so I'm scratching my head at this delayed reaction.  Perhaps it's the knowledge of his success that startles Fredrick?

Again, parentheses should be an action line unless being done simultaneously with the dialogue.

"Weather" should be "whether".

You could also get rid of the "CONTINUED's" at the bottom of each page.  They aren't necessary.

SPOILER ALERT:

So I'm confused, was Man's laptop displaying the image of heaven all this time and then after Man showed it to Fredrick, the computer jumped to the screensaver JUST as he was about to show the image of hell?  If so, wouldn't he have to click a button to display the second image?  Or if they were two images sharing the same screen, wouldn't Fredrick have seen both heaven and hell before the screensaver came up?  Perhaps Man is just a trickster and it was all just a test.  Either way this part didn't work for me.

I recommend you also thin this out.  At least enough so that "the end" could fit on the last page.

Overall, a lot of talk and not as much action as I'd like to have seen.  I know they're in an empty room but you could really have honed in on your character's reactions instead of them talking back and forth.  You could also have cut this down quite a bit, maybe to about 3 or 3 and a half pages.  As is there's not much substance to this short.  Hopefully I didn't come across as too harsh.  Take care.

Johnny

I would like to see this formatted a bit better. Indent your mid-dialogue parentheticals as you would pre-dialogue ones.

This makes it much clearer than just typing '(' and ')' in the middle of dialogue.

Or, as John suggested, use action lines instead.

Also, take another look through for grammar and spelling. Something that really stood out for me was "...you plan as though you're gonna leave forever...", surely this should say "live"?

"your name? Freddy i know everything about you, can i call you Freddy?" Why are there so many instances of missing capitalisation throughout the script? Fixing these simple issues would make your script more presentable.

Aside from technical mistakes, it's not bad. It's a cool concept but for the 'screensaver' thing to pay off 'Man' really needs two monitors. Two laptops would be even better because that would explain why one (the one he's not using) is in screensaver mode.

I've never heard of a screen saver that only affects half of the screen. Given this is central to your story, I think it appears to be a significant plot hole.

I say clean it up, add another laptop and you've got a decent story on your hands.

Yeah, what they said. If you're like me you won't want to hear this but you've gotta cut down your action lines. It's daunting just looking at them for a reader.