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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board  /  Drama Scripts  /  10 Years of Separation
Posted by: Don, July 4th, 2015, 9:45am
10 Years of Separation by Jonah Sparks - Drama - After one of their friends has been murdered, 5 friends come together to reunite and find the murderer all while revealing their darkest secrets. 93 pages - pdf, format 8)
Posted by: Max, July 4th, 2015, 10:11am; Reply: 1
Hey Jonah,

I'm sorry to say this, but I couldn't get past the first page.


Quoted Text
We see what appears to be a breezy Pacific Northwest night
we notice that there must be a party going on as we see a
campfire and six small figures dancing around it with loud
hip-hop music playing throughout the woods.


This is your opening and it's all one sentence.  I'm not against using "we" by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not executed well here, sorry to say.

Things need to be broken up with commas and periods.


Quoted Text
JAMES THOMAS, 18, average height and average build with
short brown hair, ANDREW WILSON, 18, tall and lanky with
medium blonde hair, DAVID CARTER, 18, short and stocky built
with medium black hair, MIKE TAYLOR, 17, very muscular and
athletic with dark skin and no hair, KEVIN RODRIGUEZ, 17
short and skinny with tan skin and of Hispanic decent and
messy black hair, SCOTT LANGSTON, 17, average height and
average build with spiky brown hair.


This is NOT okay, and it was the nail in the coffin before I even got started.  You've introduced me to 6 characters, all in one single action paragraph, which stretches to 8 lines.

It's a huge mistake to machine-gun the character intros like that.  You bombard the reader with too much information at once, and it's overwhelming.  Do you honestly expect the reader to take in all that information in one fell swoop?  All it's going to do is make people not care about your characters.

This needs a lot of work IMO.
Posted by: TonyDionisio, July 5th, 2015, 2:34pm; Reply: 2
That creepy-ass sig is back.
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