They Just Peasants by Barry John Terblanche - Short, Action - When American President gave the order; Launch missile - they just peasants! There came grave consequences!  22 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Barry: If you want to find success with your work - you really have to clean up your typos, grammar and format issues. It is an absolute must. Starting with your logline:

Quoted Text When American President gave the order; Launch missile - they just peasants! There came grave consequences!

missing a "the" after When.

Quoted Text FADE IN

Should be FADE IN:

So, we have typos in your logline and the very first thing you type on your script page.

Quoted Text A large sleek drone glides into view. Two missiles attached underwing. Ahead, is its mission destination... faint lights of a distant rural village, Jezeh.

"The: faint lights.

Quoted Text LIEUTENANT WEST, 30's, athletic build. He is the Colonels 2. I.C. He's seated at a monitoring station, just right of Col.

You don't need  He is the Colonels 2 and it is unfilmable to boot. But if you are going to include it - Colonel's - not Colonels and number two - not 2. And spell out  I.C.

Quoted Text LT. WEST Drone is 6 minutes, 40 seconds to target launch, Sir.

In dialogue - always spell out the numbers. - six minutes - not 6 minutes.

Quoted Text LT. WEST (CONT'D) (Nervous tone) ...Sir, the smaller images... eleven... They of CHILDREN!

They are of children. ALso - lose the CAPS in your dialogue - never needed. You do it often - just use lower case. Also - not sure you need the parenthetical - it is implied by the dialogue.

Quoted Text COL. BRIGGS GOD DAMMIT LIEUTENANT... You think I don't know that!

Comma needed after dammit.
Lose the caps.
? after that.

Quoted Text Col. Briggs gets a grip of himself. Yet, his tense. Lt. West. His one hand furious over his keyboard, the other over his ear piece...

He's tense - not his tense.

Lt. West is not a sentence. and the entire sentence that follows doesn't make grammatical sense.

Quoted Text LT. WEST Sir, SECRETARY OF STATE, POMPEO, is still dark, Sir... ...GENERAL MILLEY too, Sir.

No need for the CAPS

And - this is an example of an error you make throughout - there are no blank lines in dialogue blocks. Not ever. There are a ton of places where you do this in your script. It is never right. Get rid of al the blank lines in dialogue blocks.

Quoted Text COL. BRIGGS GOD DAMMIT! Get me the President on the line!

Why are you starting a new line after Dammit. That is the wrong format. It should be:

COL. BRIGGS
GOD DAMMIT! Get me the President on
the line!

Quoted Text OPERATATIONS SCREEN

Error throughout - it's OPERATIONS

I'm stopping with examples on page 2. But note that there are many, many errors on every page of this script.

I am not trying to be cruel or snarky, but this is why people are not reading your stuff, Barry. They start, see tons of errors and they think - well, if the writer didn't care - why should I?

Now, I know you care - that is not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that, to take writing seriously, by definition means you will take format, grammar and spelling seriously. You must find a way to tackle your problems in these areas. They are ruining your work.

In terms of the story itself.

I thought the first five pages were really solid story-wise. They had great tension and sense of doom and dread.

I thought it went off the rails a bit after that in terms of believability. Stuff like the President being whisked off into hiding after a drone strike because all of America wants him dead was too much of a stretch for me. I didn't find it at all realistic. But again - the first five were solid.

Best of luck.

Eldave1

Thanks for the read and extensive comments that'll take heed to and correct accordingly.

Quoted from BarryJohn Eldave1 Thanks for the read and extensive comments that'll take heed to and correct accordingly.

No problem - glad they helped

Hi Barry,

Thought I’d check this out.  Firstly, I’ll say I’m in the same boat as Dave on the writing.  It will take time, but until you’ve got a handle on the nuts and bolts of grammar and punctuation it’s hard for a reader to fully engage with the story you’re trying to tell.

With that said, I did make it to the end.  It’s not a story that works for me, in that it runs foul of logic and plausibility and, with respect, began to feel like a spur of the moment idea as opposed to a well thought out narrative.

There’s something to be said for the initial concept.  The set-up gives us a ticking clock scenario and there’s conflict between the officers responsible for executing the strike—that could work.  But beyond that, you lost me.  Some genres have a certain tolerance for believability—horror, comedy, sci-fi etc. but it all has to fit within the world the writer creates—and it takes time to set-up that world so the logic of events doesn’t seem out of place.  You’re delving into some pretty niche worlds here—political/military protocol, news reporting etc. If the way your characters come across on the page isn’t believable (in their actions/interactions/dialogue) then it’s going to be a struggle to stay invested.

For instance, there’s nothing that says you can’t have a high ranking officer pull a gun on a subordinate for refusing a command; but if you do, it needs setting up in such a way that the situation/stakes would demand it.  At barely 3-pages in, we know that the strike would likely kill innocents, but what happens if they call it off?  What’s on the other side of that door that makes this situation inevitable?  What are the stakes or mystery driving the story?  

The fact that another staff member simply takes over from West renders the whole gun-pull redundant.  Why not just dismiss West and have the other guy do it in the first place?

This is a busy script for a 22-page short.  Who’s your main character here?  Briggs? West? Ramsey?  A story needs something to anchor the reader—a character to help us navigate the world you’ve created and some kind of goal in mind; otherwise we’re bouncing from one face to another with no clear focus or emotional attachment.

Not to layer on the negatives, and I stress this is intended to help.  Again, I think the biggest thing here is that this feels rushed—both in concept and execution.  I see you posting a lot of scripts and it seems (IMO) like you’re rushing to get your work out there without taking the time to read through and iron out those mistakes. You've clearly got the itch to write and that’s great, but you’re making it all the more difficult to see the story beneath the surface clutter.

If you haven’t seen it already, check out Black Mirror, The National Anthem—that’s a highly improbable scenario that they managed to make believable (probably the best one they ever did).

Hope this helps,

Steve

Hi Steven

Thank you for the read and lengthy comments / advice that I will take in rectifying hereto as well as future scripts.  

Yes, I did this one in a bit of a hurry. I had a 10 pager in mind... but got lost in it.

I gave particular thought to what you had mentioned, unbelievable! With that I gave it a re-read. So right you are - I'm in for a rewrite here.

Thanks again for your valid time taken to write your comment / advice hereto.