If I Could Escape by Shelby Vernon White IV - Short, Drama - A young boys internal battle with home, work, and school while living within a broken family setting. - pdf, format 8)

Shelby,

Congrats on getting a script finished. I don't know if you're even around, so I'll keep it short.

You have a decent story here, but it's not really in a screenplay format, meaning your writing in particular. Your use of slug lines could be a little better but fine for the most part. But your action writing is way overdone, way too descriptive and filled with unfilmables.

You want to make your action much more concise and to the point, giving us only what we really need to know, and only what we can see in film. You're writing a movie here, not a novel. There is way to much unnecessary detail that slows the read down to a crawl. This script could probably be five pages instead of eight if you trimmed it down...way down.

Your story was not bad. I'm a drama guy so I could appreciate you throwing in things like the beer can, only to come back to it later. And the Superman angle, and the feeling of wanting to fly away and be free of his miserable life. And his life is miserable. Too much so perhaps.

Youhad a happy ending, but I need more than just that to give the father a more redeeming quality.

Overall, not bad. Invest in a couple screenwriting books, or look up online the things you're having trouble with: concise action writing for screenplays, flashback...

Good luck with your writing!

Steve