Dog by Rennie Arundell - Short, Western - A stranger comes to town and takes an unwitting hostage. He bullies him until the tide starts to turn. 15 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hey Rennie!

Quoted Text ACT I: THE SALOON

Is this suppose to be on the screen? If so, it would be SUPER: ACT I: THE SALOON.
If not, I'm curious to find out the reason for it?

Quoted Text He too wears the faux western clothing but no cowboy boots. Black sneakers.

This sentence confuses me a little.  If it's a western, how is his clothing "faux."  

Quoted Text Somebody reaches to his side. Gershom’s hand is faster.

I think it needs to be a little more dramatic, something like   "SOD BUSTER corner table reaches. Gershom's draws and puts a hole in him before he can get his gun out of the holster. "

Quoted Text EXT. NEXT TOWN – DAY Fingal enters the new town. It is just as deserted as the last. A phone booth sticks out of the sun-blasted sidewalk. Fingal leans against the phone booth and holds his side. The dog is at his feet, panting. Fingal unfolds the picture and holds it against the phone booth with one hand. He again reads the phone number written on the reverse side of the picture. He puts change into the callbox. He dials the number. A female voice comes on. It is a recording.

  This scene confuses me.   Seems to have advanced technology to be  a western movie? Is this a hybrid type of setting? Don't think they had phone numbers back then.

All in all good story. I like your writing style. Really liked the names of your characters. As you know I'm a newbie so don't put to much weight into what I say unless it makes since to you. I'm no authority on the screenwriting craft.

All the Best!

Thank you for the review, KevinS. It's not a time period western set in 1810 or 1910, so that's why things like phone booths are included and why there's such a description as "faux western clothes." I believe another description stating the opening scene/setting to be "a time/town out of place." This may have been removed from the version on the site. So it's meant to be anachronistic.

The breakdowns such as "ACT I, ACT II," etc. aren't explicitly meant to be superimposed, but more as emotional(?) cues as to what's going on. If a director would choose to super them, that would be their choice. It was an experiment in style.

Thank you for your compliment on the characters' names. Originally they were just THE STRANGER and THE LONER, but I saw too many short scripts with just 'the man,' 'the guy,' etc. as main characters so I thought I'd try something different by finding names which meant 'outsider', wanderer', 'alone', etc.