The Old Man's Painting by Steven R. Tenney - Short, Drama - An Old Man finds that his deceased wife is escaping from the paintings he has done of her. 22 pages - pdf, format

New writer interested in feedback on this work

Steven,

Comments often suffer a thousand deaths.

I'll talk about the writing first, and the problems begin with the opening line.

Early morning light streams through an old man's curtains

How do we know their an old man's curtains?  What detail shows that?  While you, the writer, know that the curtains belong to an old man, neither the reader nor the audience can know unless you provide some telling detail.

And then, you give us an info dump.  Simon is 76, he's ready to die, he feels old and in pain.  How could you show us that without the voice over?  Film is visual.  Show us his aches and pains, his readiness for death.  

You take Simon from the bedroom to the kitchen, but you don't change the slug line.  Generally, the kitchen would be a different scene.

Then you take us outside where fog clings to the trees..not is clinging.  And another info dump.  

And we get to a story problem.  If Simon was painting a plane in 1945, and it's 2015, and he's 76, then he was 6 yrs old in 1945.  Quite  a child prodigy.  

In the next scene he tells us once again he almost died in a car crash.  Do we need to be reminded?

He talks to his dog, and that's not a bad thing, but it's repetitive and boring.  

And he meets the ghost.  This should have been the opening.  It sets the scene far better than Simon waking in the morning.  A little point here.  Most stories don't begin with the dawn.  Most good stories begin with the inciting incident, something that happens to start the chain of events you want to describe.  Up to this point, Simon's life is one boring day after another.  The incident, the thing out of the ordinary is the ghost.  This is where your story begins.  Start there.

And we get to the meat of the tale.  Virginia has come retrieve Simon, to lead him to the promised.  If you had set her up as something sinister, then you can have some real conflict.  After all, Simon doesn't want to fool around with a mean ghost.  But she's just fine, so the conflict seems anticlimatic.  Or had you gone the other way, make her look like a chocolate sundae only to turn out as the devil's minion.  That would have been kept the audience in place too.  As it is, the dialogue becomes redundant and slow.  

Try to break up your long paragraphs of action.  3 or 4 lines at a time.  Lead your audience in one direction and then reverse things so they'll want to keep going along with you.  People bore easily.  keep writing.

Best
Richard

Thanks for the tips.  Firstly the story doesn't take place in 2015.  Why would you assume that?
I will consider your other suggestions when I do a rewrite.

thanks

steve

Steve,

I just checked, and there is no date info in the opening scene, so I figured it was present day.

If it doesn't occur in present day, when does it?  If you want it in a specific era, give that to us.

Best
Richard

Readers are right to assume that stories take place in present day unless shown otherwise.

I scanned your script and you don't have any details as to when the story takes place. Once up submit a script, you don't have time to chat about the script. It needs to stand on its own. Yours doesn't.

None of your details show anything other than present day. You could have an easy SUPER: SAN FRANCISCO, 1955

Or show him looking at a calendar - mint condition, showing the date as 1955.

Any google search will show you the proper way to format a screenplay, so I won't get into that here.

What are your goals with this script? With screenwriting? Is it a hobby, or do you want to make it a career? If it's the first, fine. Have fun.

If you want to get produced and make money, then you'll need to do a lot of work on the Hollywood standard. You can't ignore the basic rules - Courier New, size 12 - and expect the golden ticket.