The Remnant by Colton Harrell - Short, Horror - After getting a routine call of a noise complaint of a family friend. One officer discovers something far more sinister has taken place. 8 pages - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hello Colton,

Your first ACTION paragraph you wrote:
We see the flickering of an old cafe sign with the eerie
buzzing coming from it.

Lets try this:
The flicker of the old cafe sign has an eerie BUZZING.

This accomplishes:
* dumping the WE SEE which is old fashion.
* ridding the INGs and gives the sentence a stronger feel.
* CAPPING the SOUND words in the ACTION. i.e. BUZZING

Another example: we see inside an empty gun rack.

TRY THIS:

Inside is an empty gun rack.

Your script has many of these WE SEEs, INGs, etc. that can be clean up in a rewrite.

We hear muffled music from inside.  Could be rewritten to: Muffled MUSIC comes from the inside.

The WE HEAR is the same sin as WE SEE.

All these WE stuff interferes with the read. Look at WEs as speed bumps. Dump them.

I prefer NOT using CONTINUES at the top and bottom of pages. Kind of old fashion. But that's my taste.

I recommend a rewrite and you'll see your story come more alive.

Good luck to you and keep going.

Steve

Colton - sound advice above - I gave up on this as the we sees became annoying.

Quoted Text JIM Night Jenny

need a comma after night - issue throughout

I don't want to start a 'we see' debate but I will just say I've read a lot of the Black and Blood Lists of 2017 lately and am amazed how many of the writers utilised the 'we see' format.

As always, story is key.

Imho  'we see' is only a problem if it's one of many other problems.

No doubt it pisses a lot of writers off when reading it, but not so much anyone else.

Quoted from LC I don't want to start a 'we see' debate but I will just say I've read a lot of the Black and Blood Lists of 2017 lately and am amazed how many of the writers utilised the 'we see' format. As always, story is key. Imho  'we see' is only a problem if it's one of many other problems. No doubt it pisses a lot of writers off when reading it, but not so much anyone else.

Well, I guess we'll see :)

This is emblematic example of the problem from this script.

Quoted Text EXT. WADE’S ROAD/HOME - NIGHT - LATER He drives down a long dirt road with junk littered all over the yard. We see the house in the distance. Jim pulls up and parks the car.

Here's a case where it is totally unnecessary and less accurate. i.e., Jim sees the house - I'm assuming that's why he parked the car. So the writer simply needs to write:

Jim spots a house in the distance. He pulls up, park.

So for me, that is where the we see serves as a derailment.

I agree, I also spot it in pro scripts all the time - I'm assuming it is just a shortcut that they can get away with because they've already sold the thing.

I like to get engrossed in a story and the "we sees" and "we hears" don't bother me from a rule perspective - but more so because they take me out of the story. It's also quite boring. I would much rather read:

BANG! -  a gunshot echoes in the night.

rather than

We hear a gunshot.

Just my humble opinion.