Bad Girls by Nikki Cox - Action, Adventure, Comedy - Two female detectives Latoya Burns and Alex Mitchells risk everything they love when they attempt to take down Drug Lord City Councilman Donovan Murphy. 117 pages - pdf format

New writer interested in feedback on this work

Dear Nikki,
went through the first 10, then jumped fast to the end.
First and foremost, check your script formatting. Download a free software, and do this properly. Scene headers is the number one missing there.
Why so many capitals?
Long chunks of action and dialogue. Regarding the first, rule of thumb is 3 lines at most.
First time introduced, characters' names should be in capitals.
Your action style looks to me extremely dull/colorless; no emotion, no feelings, no description of the surroundings, etc.

Just read the first page, and ran across something that I do quite a lot in dialogue. Here's a quick exchange:

MIKE BURNET - I'll give it a few more minutes then we're going in.

RED CAHILL - Just relax. They know what they're doing. If something is wrong they will let us know. Let's wait it out. It is their bust after all.

In my first drafts, for some reason, I end up with dialogue like Red's. He is essentially saying "Let's wait" five times in a row but in slightly different ways. I don't know how others feel, but I think if you chose the best of those five sentences, the script would move a lot quicker, Red's response would feel cooler, and it would leave a bit of mystery for the reader.

Hi Nikki,

Went through the first 15-20 pages. Off the top, it was a lot of fun to read. Your main, Latoya, speaks in such a fun and distinctive voice that I can easily picture her hair flying, gun drawn, screaming out at everyone.

However, as mentioned, your action description is dull. Sounds more like an instruction book.

Your text:
Man 2 jumps up and attempts to punch Burns in the face. Man 2
and Burns fight before she knocks him out cold. Burns grabs
her gun and jacket off of the man. As she leaves the room a
man comes running out the other room in front of her and sees
the gun in her hand and badge. He attempts to shoot at Burns.
Burns raises her gun first and gets a head shot.

Try:
Man 2 jumps up, swinging wildly at Burns.

She dodges, slamming her fist into his gut. Doubled over, she nails him in the face with her knee, sending him ass over teakettle, knocking him out cold.

She grabs her gun and jacket, but before she can leave there is someone else.

He sees her gun, her badge.

BANG! He fires wide.

BANG! She doesn't.


Think about how the camera would "see" things. You can't leave it up to the imagination of your audience.
And, of course, do NOT say "CAMERA POV", or "We see", or "CAMERA PANS". This takes the reader out of the world you are trying to create for them. It can tough to do, but I'm sure you will figure it out.

Cheers. Keep at it.