-
Wondering which camera, gear, computer, or software to buy? Ask in our Gear Guide.
I have written up to the beginning of the climax, how do you think I set things up?
- Thread starter Comikkaze
- Start date
I read the first half and skimmed the second.
The biggest issue I see is that most of the scenes are just People Standing Around And Talking At Each Other. It reads like "Hi! Here's what's going on!", "This is what I am thinking", "We are all talking exactly like each other with no differences between characters".
To be fair, this is still far better than the first three or four scripts I attempted to write.
I would tear down what you have, start from scratch, and stick as best you can to the "Show, Don't Tell" approach. The whole opening sequence is incredibly confusing -- you have some guys in a messy room talking about vague things and dads, and I was immediately lost.
You want to draw people into your story. Instead of having a group of people talking, write some scenes where people are doing things, and slowly introduce your plot piece by piece. Use this early screen time you give your characters differing personalities, so when the plot kicks in the viewer/reader knows who's who.
When writing your dialog, try to envision the scene in your head. People rarely talk in stilted, perfect English. There's stammering, pauses, incomplete sentence fragments, etc. Work all this in so the dialog flows naturally.
Remember that people don't generally state exactly what they're thinking. You want the audience to know this instead by the characters actions, tone of voice, and what they actually choose to say to the other characters.
I'm no screenwriting expert by any means, but you can sort of see what I'm talking about in the short script ("Lucid") I posted in another thread.
Plot and Pacing: The last thing you want is for the audience to be confused and bored. This is bad. Very bad. Remember that you're telling a story. It's story time! Given the nature of some of the more out-there elements in your script, you can really take the audience on an adventure. Pretend you're sitting in the audience watching your story play out on the screen. What holds your interest? What would you consider to be fun, entertaining, interesting, scary, and/or dramatic?
The story also needs some kind of basic structure (as all stories do). If you're very new to story structure, I'd recommend sticking with the standard three act structure that a lot of movies follow. It gives you a basic framework to drape your story over and will save you a lot of trouble later on. Once you're comfortable with that, then you can start experimenting with other story styles without getting bogged down with pacing issues or risking audience confusion.
Just my 2 cents.
The biggest issue I see is that most of the scenes are just People Standing Around And Talking At Each Other. It reads like "Hi! Here's what's going on!", "This is what I am thinking", "We are all talking exactly like each other with no differences between characters".
To be fair, this is still far better than the first three or four scripts I attempted to write.
I would tear down what you have, start from scratch, and stick as best you can to the "Show, Don't Tell" approach. The whole opening sequence is incredibly confusing -- you have some guys in a messy room talking about vague things and dads, and I was immediately lost.
You want to draw people into your story. Instead of having a group of people talking, write some scenes where people are doing things, and slowly introduce your plot piece by piece. Use this early screen time you give your characters differing personalities, so when the plot kicks in the viewer/reader knows who's who.
When writing your dialog, try to envision the scene in your head. People rarely talk in stilted, perfect English. There's stammering, pauses, incomplete sentence fragments, etc. Work all this in so the dialog flows naturally.
Remember that people don't generally state exactly what they're thinking. You want the audience to know this instead by the characters actions, tone of voice, and what they actually choose to say to the other characters.
I'm no screenwriting expert by any means, but you can sort of see what I'm talking about in the short script ("Lucid") I posted in another thread.
Plot and Pacing: The last thing you want is for the audience to be confused and bored. This is bad. Very bad. Remember that you're telling a story. It's story time! Given the nature of some of the more out-there elements in your script, you can really take the audience on an adventure. Pretend you're sitting in the audience watching your story play out on the screen. What holds your interest? What would you consider to be fun, entertaining, interesting, scary, and/or dramatic?
The story also needs some kind of basic structure (as all stories do). If you're very new to story structure, I'd recommend sticking with the standard three act structure that a lot of movies follow. It gives you a basic framework to drape your story over and will save you a lot of trouble later on. Once you're comfortable with that, then you can start experimenting with other story styles without getting bogged down with pacing issues or risking audience confusion.
Just my 2 cents.
This can certainly be tricky at times. I'd say try to write your scenes with as little dialog as possible. Be sure to interject what the characters are doing while they're talking. This can be anything from major actions to simple descriptions of fidgeting, facial expressions, any little thing that shows what a character is thinking or feeling without that character explicitly stating it in dialog.
Actually, as an exercise, try to write your scenes with no dialog whatsoever, and only have a character talk if there's absolutely no other way to get the pertinent information across.
Tomorrow I am going to start a brand new story. This one became a burden and changed too much from my original plan. It will stay as an idea for now. I have plenty of those floating around and I thunk it's about time I work on an new one. I want to make a drama that needs no special effects. Something I can make and edit purely with what I have. I need to think realistically for now. I'll work on showing my scenes rather than telling them though and I will definitely be back for more feedback. Thanks