Bigg Score by Doug Trettin - Drama, Action - Along with his challenged little sister, a prodigy is raised by their feisty grandmother on the wrong side of the tracks when he decides to rediscover his forgotten talent in an attempt to provide a better life for his family…or… die trying. 122 pages

contest: 2012 Scriptapalooza Quarterfinalist - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Thanks for posting !

Trade reviews anyone ?

I guess no news is good news !

I read half a page, it looks well written. Not my kind of story though, the logline doesn't interest me. It's too ambiguous. What is his talent? If it was an interesting talent, I may be enticed to read more.. it feels to me, at the moment, as though you're hiding what it is because it isn't very interesting.

The logline should grab me, make me want to read more... simply hinting at a 'talent' doesn't do it for me.

Maybe that's it.

Aside from that though, you seem like an accomplished writer. Maybe you should send it out to prodco's and whatever, see what reactions you get.

Thanks Dustin.  I've tried about a thousand different log lines - I'm sure you can relate!  I get what you are saying though and will continue to work on it.  Thanks again....Cheers !

Doug-

8 pages in, and though I'm not seeing any major flaws in the writing, the story itself just hasn't grabbed me with anything yet. Not an uncommon dilemma, but if you put the "action" label on it, you should probably move up a scene that's going to excite the reader. I think those first 8 could easily be chopped down with less dialogue. Hard for me to say without reading further in, but the entire first 3 1/2 pages might even be better as a flashback later in the story, even if just to get to the action quicker (assuming it comes soon). Hope this helps. Good luck!  

Bogey, great idea to use flashback and move some of the action to the first ten pages.  THANK YOU !

Hi Doug,

Well written but I think overwritten is the feel I get. Suggest losing the non important details and skip to the character introduction/story moving stuff. Give the actors room while you give them stuff to do.

Your log line must display protagonist goal, than obstacles,  stakes and maybe some irony. Everything in 2 sentences. Can you do that?

Cool.  Thanks Tony !  BTW, I mostly took Bogey's advice and moved some of the action to the very beginning .  I hope to post a revision soon.  Cheers guys!
Doug T.

@ INTS
...hmmmm.  We'll see !

FYI just submitted a revision (to script) based on notes here.  Thanks !
Best,
Doug T

The revised script is up!  Love for the 1st fifteen to be read !  Thanks and Cheers
DT

Ok so here is my review.

First of all it was mostly well written, there were some formatting things that I am not a big fan of but I am not gonna base my review on those few minor pet peeves I have.

I feel like the story got off to an interesting enough start the first few pages of the initial robbery had me curious as to what was to come. The story began to lose me though when it went back in time.

The death of the parents was handled fine but after that it became a muddled mess for me and i did not get any real connection to the characters through out the entire middle of the story. I began to lose interest and wonder what this film was even about or where it was going.

I give your credit for what appears to be very descriptive and accurate lacrosse scenes but honestly I know nothing about the sport and so these were difficult to read and felt like they dragged on for far too long, These are scenes I am sure would play out better in action then they do reading them but as is they drag down the screenplay in the middle.

Once we get back in the timeline to when the robbery actually takes place the story picked back up again and had my interest until the end. I was curious to see how things played out.

My biggest complaint however can be summed up in one word "cliche" so much of the story seemed cliche to me, I will list the biggest culprits of that below.

Trey. Trey was a jerk for no apparent reason, his whole "clique" was typical high school movie stuff, the putting of the sign on Vince's back was cheesy and didnt feel real to me. Then there feud was resolved far too simply for my taste. In a blink they went from enemies to best friends.

Smithy's Dad I have no problem with the most troubled character in the story having an abusive parent, my problem is we never see or have any refrence to this person except for the single scene showing the abuse, it feels like it was thrown in there at the last minute to generate some sympathy for the Smithy character, I would recommend adding more of Smithy's rough family life throughout the film or completely remove this scene all together.

these were the two most glaring examples to me. I did not understand why Smithy took Vincent's ring at the end and I especially don't understand why he would take it to the final meeting, It all seemed to simply be there to move the story towards his death but lacked any logical reasoning I could find.

In the end I found his death unsatisfying, when trying to imagine the scene him grabbing the gun and shooting himself seemed very hard to picture it looking believable, and if he was able to grab the gun in that way why not try to knock the gun away or defend himself in some way. I would have rather seen him simply executed.

Then Wes and the other "bad" guys all conveniently get arrested right at the end with no real explanation of how, this felt like it was just added to provide a happier ending. I have no problem with them getting caught but the way it currently is written feels like it was just thrown in.

What you have here is the making of a good story, I just feel somethings need to be tweaked to make it work better. The middle part of the story drags too much and the ending feels a bit too contrived. My main suggestion would be to build up more to your final act, perhaps have Smithy get the job at the strip club earlier in the film and show his decline into criminal activity more, this could provide a side story and build up to the finale. Also I would rework the Trey & Vincent relationship, I think it is an important part of the story to show his adjustment to a new school and the "right" path in life but as is it just felt unbelievable to me.

I definitely think you have something good here to work on and I hope you continue to re-write it and refine it.

Overrall I have to say nice work and congrats on completing this! I hope you take no offense to my honest review, Honesty is the only way we all improve :) keep up the good work.

Right out of the gate, I'm noticing errors, incorrect slugs, extremely bland character descriptions with no flavor - and this is all on the first page.  What's a "sad refrigerator"?  I've never heard the term before.  I Googled it and looked up images - all I got were cartoon pictures of refrigerators that were crying.  Is it referred to as a sad refrigerator because there's only "two lone beers" inside it and nothing else?  If I were you, I'd keep the writing as simple as possible.  My version:  the refrigerator door opens and Luke reaches in for a beer.  Pretty simple.

I'm not a fan of the "open with something action packed and then flash backward in time", especially here, because it's not like we're flashing back 3 days or whatever, but we're going all the way back as far as 7 years and then we return to the present which is 8 years later.  It all reads like a jumbled mess to me and I would do without the flashbacks or at the very least trim them up drastically.

Your characters, in my opinion, felt as cardboard as they could get.  There were some occasional lines of dialogue I really liked, a line or two here or there, but other than that, the same old pot smokers with nothing different about them.  It appears Vincent's talent is he's very good at lacrosse.  That's cool, I suppose, and maybe you'll even find lacrosse fans who will be super pumped to read your script and will end up loving it, because, really, who has ever seen a movie about lacrosse?  I suppose you have a fresh spin here.  Every sport flick is about baseball or football, and here you're taking a risk with lacrosse - something I don't think that's ever been explored on film.  That's good shit, but unfortunately, in my opinion, lacrosse is about as entertaining as watching paint dry.

I suppose I would have read more than I did if your characters were intriguing enough, but they weren't doing it for me.  Plus, I got to page 30 and I didn't sense a protagonist that wanted something really bad, so I started to tune out.  I can see why this is 114 pages long too.  I noticed that your action lines reach as much as 4 lines or more, sometimes 7.  I would suggest keeping them at 2 - maybe 3 - 4 is pushing it.  I'm glad I gave this a look, though.  I gained quite a bit from the read.  Definitely took a lot away from it.  Wish you the best of luck with this.  Lastly, you don't need to listen to anything I say, either, as I'm not a professional writer, I'm just some guy on a message board.  This post just contains my general thoughts of the script after taking a look at it.  Do what you think works.   :)

Quoted from Guest What's a "sad refrigerator"?

When something is described as sad in this way it means that it is dirty, unkempt, perhaps in disrepair.

Ah, gotchya  8)

@ YaBoy Topher and deadite...
Ya know, the fact you guys took the time to read and give notes is in a big way validating and for that I thank you.  I take your points with sincere contemplation.  I will use what I think is best.  I'm sure you guys can relate to some notes and comments being completely contradictory - as in one person likes action at the beginning (or not !) and maybe another person needs to see (or not !) why Smithy's home life sucks so much that  along with his feeling that Vincent's life is perhaps worth more than his own are reasons to pull the trigger.  Thanks again for the reads; my impression that the read was not a waste of time and I should continue to rewrite [for the 100th time, literally!].
@Dustin..thanks for getting my "sad" refrigerator !

Made revisions based on YaBoy Topher's comments.  Spoiler :  the ending is no longer rosey.i will request a revision post.  Thanks guys

Just submitted a third.  More than a few changes and also incorporated some of deadite's notes.  Thanks and Cheers !
I will make a quick post when it is up.

Doug T

For those who are still here, the latest revision is up (7.23.14).    Thanks again  
Doug Trettin