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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board  /  Comedy Scripts  /  The Last Piece of Chicken
Posted by: Don, March 19th, 2020, 4:52pm
The Last Piece of Chicken by Russell Stanton - Comedy - Cace 'Queen C.' Booker, works desperately to find her missing, 12 pieces of Jubilee Backhand Chicken, stolen by her rival Col. Fowl. They both rely and recruit their own personal task forces to retrieve, by any means necessary - THE LAST PIECE OF CHICKEN! 120 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Posted by: Talldave, April 3rd, 2020, 4:25pm; Reply: 1
I'm going to take the narrator as Samuel L. Jackson as more of a suggestion of style, but honestly, not needed. The way it's written, it's clear what style of narrator you're looking for. This seems like a script you plan on self-producing instead of selling? Otherwise, some of these technical elements that I'm choosing to ignore might be a problem in the long run. Such as commanding when the title card is shown, what the intro music is, and who your narrators are.

If I'm wrong, you can suggest styles of music, but unless this is the next Baby Driver, specific song choices don't really qualify as necessary elements of your story. I'll read on to find out...

Your action is a bit chunky, especially these first couple pages. I would suggest trimming a lot of the extra reax from the crowd.

Off of the three costumed characters faces? That's confusing

Chill on the elipses (...) it's meant to be a very dramatic, possibly thee longest pause, of any punctuation. So, to use it five times on page 3 alone slows the reader down WAY too much.

Throughout the script, instead of writing things such as, "The Mayor is bothered by the comments," rewrite all description like this so that you are visually showing how the Mayor acts that shows he is bothered by these comments. Does he frown? Does he cry? What is he doing visually to show the audience he is upset if he was on screen.

So, upon seeing three exclamation points (the crowd goes apeshit wild!!!), my suggestion is to use all emphatic punctuation much, much, much more sparingly. Take off caps lock, too. Unless this is script is meant to be self-produced, people are intuitive enough to understand when excitement is meant to be displayed without all the extra punctuation. Also, it makes you look like you don't care or understand "proper formatting". Which, is important for selling scripts.

Wow, the Mayor's fantasy totally caught me off guard, kudos. I mean, it's absolutely obscene to a ridiculous degree, it's like a teenage boys wet dream, but it fooled me.

Lol, yeah, SHUT THA FUCK UP, RAY.

So, ten pages in and here's the last "in depth" bit of CC I'll offer. I'm not certain of who the main character is. That's BAD. I'm guessing the story is going to revolve entirely around the stolen recipe? It's not entirely clear, which is bad. I'm kind of sure, but not really sure.

I'm not all that against the stlye and sense of humor, I'm enjoying it. Maybe reel it back like 5%.

Technically, if you want to sell this, you should clean this up a lot, but if this is something you're doing yourself then whatever.

That all being said, I actually really like the world you've created here. It's a really niche style, and it's a niche I enjoy. I think the plot and characters aren't as clear as they could be. Things could clear up in the next few pages, but this is where I'm at as of page ten.

You set up certain elements, like the quick visual of the guns in the buckets, but you are usually too vague to create an expectation for your reader. Instead of building suspense by showing the guns waiting in the buckets, you confused me. It's like, alright, guns in buckets, but what the hell does that mean? The three costumed characters could share a look, or a small interaction, but simply saying "off of the three costumed characters faces" won't do it.

I skimmed to the end and I've seen more characters than the cast of Be Cool in this thing. Shaq makes an appearance, there's a sequel, and crackhead clones. You might want to trim this down to 90 pages.

{edit: I tried to read further, I really did, but it gets A LOT messier past page 20. Pages of humongous dialogue blocks, The same jokes over, and over, and over. I feel what you were trying to do here, but you need to refine your writing, like on a technical level.}

Good work on getting it done!
Posted by: stampede331, April 16th, 2020, 12:51pm; Reply: 2
This script is bonkers.  I made it up to p. 36 with some success.  It's like reading a dream, a fever dream, a crackhead's fever dream, with exposition that is of the king's English.  This has gotta be an animated movie, right?  Like Sausage Party?  I'm just a novice screenwriter, with my first ever script being Doubles, which is posted right here.  It's honestly not for me, but congrats on getting it done.  It's tough to write a feature length script and I think the idea of a war over the rights to chicken is a funny concept.
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