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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board  /  Horror Scripts  /  Dark Land
Posted by: Don, January 11th, 2015, 9:21am
Dark Land by James Edward Sterling - Horror - Trapped in a dark and mysterious land where the sun never shines, eighteen year old Jason Andrews is driven by the abiding conviction that something is horribly wrong. With the help of what he believes to be his family, Jason makes many attempts to escape from this dark and hopeless place. But nothing is what it seems in this shadowy realm and Jason’s attempts to escape always end in his own death. Even in death, there is no escaping the dark land. Every time that he dies, Jason wakes up somewhere else in the realm, usually forgetting most or all of the events that led to his death. He finds himself trapped in a loop of repeating events, unaware that he is living a never-ending nightmare. 116 pages - pdf, format 8)
Posted by: Lon, January 11th, 2015, 4:09pm; Reply: 1
The good news: the premise, though repetitive as written, sounds interesting.

The bad news: everything else.  It's apparent from the very first page that you have a lot to learn about the look and language of screenplays.  Fancy fonts, exorbitant and lengthy detail, camera directions -- your slug lines aren't even properly formatted.  

I say this not to dishearten you, but to urge you to bone up on how to actually write a screenplay.  You could well have a helluva story here, but no one's going to know it because no one's going to bother reading it looking like this.  You've done yourself, and whatever story you have here, a tremendous disservice in presenting it to us like this.

So go bone up on proper screenplay guidelines and, more importantly, go read other screenplays.  As many as you can get your hands on.  Learn from them.  Then try it again -- starting over from page one.

Good luck.  Keep writing.  You'll get there.

- Lon
Posted by: Dreamscale (Guest), January 11th, 2015, 5:25pm; Reply: 2
As usual, Lon is spot on, but based on the logline alone, I knew exactly what would follow.  Actually...I didn't, as what followed was much worse than what I expected.

James, get involved here.  Quid Pro Quo. Read, post, engage.  The peeps here will help, and I'm sure you can help as well.

As written, this is terrible, but if you do decide to get invoilved, you'll know that very soon, and rewrite to a state that may impress.
Posted by: Scoob, January 11th, 2015, 10:53pm; Reply: 3
Yeah, pretty much the same as above.
You need to learn screenplay format, otherwise all the time you spent on this is going to waste.

Since you never bothered to research such a simple thing as : how should I write and present my screenplay,  I'm out on page 1.
Posted by: DustinBowcot (Guest), January 12th, 2015, 2:48am; Reply: 4
Yeah it's really bad. You need to learn the basics.
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