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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board  /  My Work In Progress  /  Life as a screenplay coming of age episode 1 WIP
Posted by: Clark, March 25th, 2019, 5:09pm
Logline: Ronnie fills her daughter in about the rape of Miranda.  

Genres: Drama/Comedy

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T_borDcLZKQGgzZt1loeYLlGaRu5AJ8J/view?usp=sharing

This is a first draft, of the first episode, of the spin-off, of the life as a screenplay mini-series. This one is the series that will eventually focus the three main girls: Miranda, Terrie and Fiona and growing up with everything that goes with coming of age.
Posted by: HyperMatt, March 30th, 2019, 5:11am; Reply: 1
Your paragraphs are too long and bulky Clark. They need to be broken down.

Try to get them down to two or three lines, and try to get them more focused on the action that happens and less elaborate description.
Posted by: HyperMatt, March 30th, 2019, 5:44am; Reply: 2
I would shy away from putting in things like studio logos, and particularly music, unless it directly linked to the story.
Posted by: HyperMatt, March 30th, 2019, 10:04am; Reply: 3
Don’t know much about TV/ episodic scripts, but I’ll give you my views…

This story tries to delve into things from a female perspective, wouldn’t say the logline describes the whole story, and it feels more a drama than comedy. (Drama has humor within it usually).
There are a lot of issues here I think. I see a lot of familiar problems from beginner screenwriters. Fortunately, over time a lot of these things can be fixed.

WHAT I LIKED
- Congratulations on completing a draft of your script!
- You should be congratulated by trying to write about all female characters. It is clear you are very interested in them and want to delve into their psyche.
- I had issues with the character’s being interesting, but the best drawn out one I think was Ronnie, you really felt her pain, and wanted to protect her daughter from the nasty world out there.
- Interesting that the victim is ironically an actress playing a character who has gone through the same thing. I would have liked to see more exploration of that kind of thing.
- I would like to see more shorter, leaner action descriptions like this on page 36: ‘A modest single level home. A dream for any middle-class family.’ Your action descriptions should be mostly 1 – 2 lines.
- If I had to pick the most effective scene, it is when Ronnie tells Terrie about the attack and the reactions from both of them that follow.

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE SO MUCH
- You’ve got to work on that logline. Sounds like the description of a TV episode from a soap.
- Some of your action descriptions are too long and look like big blocks, makes it tedious to read, particularly page 1 and 2.
- In some of your descriptions, you are too specific, camera angles, music that should be used, constricting the film-makers choices, and it distracts from the story. I challenge you that when you write your next script, have no camera shots, or specific music, or credit titles. Also, you use ‘We see’ a lot, it is a sign that the screenwriter is trying to be the director/ or DOP.
- Some of your action descriptions are unnecessarily elaborate, which would be okay if you were writing a novel. E.g. ‘The room is well designed; simple/bare a few well-placed items such as couches, etc, black almost mirror titled floors and what would be a very neat/clean penthouse except for the mess the girls have made: pizza boxes, junk food, etc.” You could have that all in one short line ‘The well-designed room is virtually bare with a few well-placed items, and mess of pizza boxes,’.
- Quite a few typos (I’ve PM’d you).
- CUT TOs are redundant in a spec script.
- Don’t start a paragraph with ‘Then’. Action descriptions should always be set in the present.
- I wouldn’t put detailed sluglines in unless you absolutely need a specific location for your story. ‘INT. SAINT HOPEFULS HOSPITAL, CORRIDOR - NIGHT – CONTINUOUS’ should be ‘INT. HOSPITAL – CORRIDOR – NIGHT’ (how is it continuous? It’s a totally different scene)
- Resist putting in little notes like (cost of boob job) you can’t film that, maybe you can have Fiona pointing to Traci’s breasts when she says you look like you have ten thousand in you.
- Ronnie’s name is not capitalized, and she is not described when we see her. You may have introduced her in another script but we the reader have not seen her.
- Why address her as Traci Lacey through the script, why not just Lacey?
- Got to be honest, for me, I found a lot of the stuff leading up to Ronnie telling Terri about the attack was not that interesting. There was no momentum. It did not feel like the story was moving forward. I would rework the structure completely.
- A lot of the dialogue felt, that expression I hate ‘on the nose’, basically saying a lot of things that really should be shown by other means. A lot of the dialogue I felt was too conversational, and sometimes not natural. How about that long speech from Terrie’s dad on page 38,  ‘Daddy was sorry he was a bad father’, would a father actually say that to his daughter like that?
Hope you don’t feel this is too harsh. It feels that you are at the very beginning of your screenplay journey. I would make a commitment to study more scripts from this site, and look at the comments, you will soon pick it up.
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