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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board  /  Short Scripts  /  The Ocean Deep
Posted by: Don, April 30th, 2014, 7:41pm
The Ocean Deep by Rohan Jaggatap - Short, Drama - The story is of seven year old mentally disabled child's struggle to establish his relations, his emotions to the world. 15 pages - pdf, format 8)
Posted by: James A McCormick, May 1st, 2014, 1:08pm; Reply: 1
Hi Rohan,
I'm just about to read this- will get back to you tomorrow BUT two things right off, you have numbered your scenes and have camera directions - this means it's a shooting script, that is one the director uses. You wouldn't be able to submit a spec script in this format.
Posted by: James A McCormick, May 3rd, 2014, 6:56am; Reply: 2
Hi Rohan,

It is clear that you are a sensitive writer and care about social issues and your fellow man. This comes through in your work.

I'm afraid the script itself though needs some reworking. In addition to the points above there are some things you must address as a matter of urgency.
- The grammar, you often miss a subject and constantly use the ING particple for the verb when it needs to be the present simple
- Syntax and phrasing is very odd on occassion.
-You have large sections that aren't in English with no explanation. You have an overly long monologue on page 14 for example that left me wondering just what was going on.
* It is clear that English is your second language. Whilst I'm sure you are fluent in your days to day life this is not the same with writing stylistic pieces. I would advice getting a native English speaker to help you proof read this.

You also tell us rather than show constantly. Here are three examples:
- You describe someone as 'well educated.' How do we know? Show this, maybe she wears horn rimmed glasses and has tied back hair, something like that
- A well behaved cabin can be seen (in what way?)
- A little proud can be seen in Suman’s body language, her seating style changed to more confident and attitude one (this sentence also demonstrates your grammatical errors as well)

The pacing also needs to be worked on as well, I didn't get the feeling you were building towards anything - although I liked the photograph at the end.

As I said, this is a touching tale- I'm sure you can make this work, scriptwriting is a constant reworking and polishing process.
All the best

James


Posted by: James A McCormick, May 3rd, 2014, 12:51pm; Reply: 3
One more point I forgot to add is I think it might be helpful for you to map this one out, make a value charge for each scene, does it start out positive and end negative or start negative and positive - also try to brek it down into action and response, I realise that this is not an action based script but it will give you an idea of the bones, the strucure of your story. It might seem superflous and a bit of a hassle at first but trust me it will prove invaluable if you wish to continue writing
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