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Please, Critique My First Scene

J

Jessica Sharp

Hi everyone this is my first screenplay that I have written and I would love for people to critique it. I am writing a short film about a guy who fines himself after having a bazaar experience. Below is half of the first Scene. Remember, that this is my first time writing a screenplay, but I do want your honest opinion. Sorry I can't fix the format on here. I use Celtx.


INT. RYAN'S STUDIO APARTMENT - DAY

RYAN is sitting in a chair while facing the mirror belonging to his dresser. He has a gun in his left hand and a photography of a woman and little boy in his right hand.

RYAN

(looking at himself in the mirror and crying hysterically)
I am so sorry. I have to do this. I can't take being here alone anymore.

PETER THE CLOWN knocks on RYAN's door.He is dressed in his full clown costume.

PETER THE CLOWN

(knocking intensely and yelling)
Hey, Dude, I saw you come in here earlier bro, I need your help! It is an emergency! Come on, come on, open up!

Ryan puts the gun in his dresser drawer and puts the photo of the woman and little boy on its front side facing down. He wipes the tears from is eyes.

RYAN

(Slowly getting up from the chair and walking to the door)
Okay, okay, here I come!

Ryan opens the door hesitantly.

RYAN (CONT'D)

(looking at Peter The Clown with a puzzled face)
What do you want?

PETER THE CLOWN

Do you have a cellphone? My wife just went into labor and I need to call for an ambulance.

RYAN

Don't you have a house phone you could use?

Peter The Clown pushes Ryan out of the way and comes into Ryan's apartment.

PETER THE CLOWN

(yelling at Ryan with urgency in his voice)
I don't know if you've notice but the power has been out for the past 3 hours! I don't have a cellphone and should I remind you that my wife is in labor and she could have this kid in any moment! So, give me the freaking phone!

RYAN

Alright, just, just calm down...you caught me at a bad time.

Ryan walks to the dresser and grabs his phone. He hands it to Peter The Clown.

PETER THE CLOWN

Thank you.

RYAN

Don't you have a car?

PETER THE CLOWN

Yes, I do...

RYAN

Let me guess a clown car?

PETER THE CLOWN

A matter of fact it is! But, the wife won't fit in it.

PETER THE CLOWN (CONT'D)

(looking up with a hopeful voice)
She use to have the model shape body...I mean beautiful, sexy, elegant. But, now she is as big as a factory building. I miss those days.

RYAN

I hate to say this but, I don't care. So, if, you could hurry up with the use of my phone I would be really happy.

PETER THE CLOWN

Oh, right, sorry.

TESSA (Peter The Clown wife) walks up in between the doorway. She is holding her stomach with her right hand and holding on the doorway with her left hand. Her knees are bent. She is in her acrobat costume for pregnant women. She is crying because of the intense pain. Her makeup is smeared on her face.
 
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Hi Jessica,
First of all, good job on writing your first screenplay. Many people have great ideas but never make the step of writing them down. I would suggest a couple of things. First of all, a lot of the information that you have put in parentheses can actually be written as action. E.g. (Slowly getting up from the chair and walking to the door) you can just write 'he slowly walks to the door' as action.
(yelling at Ryan with urgency in his voice) can be written in a parentheses as (urgently). Basically I would recommend trying to keep your parentheses short.
A lot of your dialogue is pretty good so I would say concentrate a little more on the action, you can probably shorten a lot of it to make it quicker/easier to read. E.g.
'RYAN is sitting in a chair while facing the mirror belonging to his dresser. He has a gun in his left hand and a photography of a woman and little boy in his right hand.'
Can become:
'RYAN sits facing the dresser mirror. He holds a gun in one hand and a photograph of a woman and a little boy in the other'.
I think you've done a good job building character so far and Peter the clown gave me a little giggle. Well done so far!
 
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If you are writing this to shoot yourself, you'll want to focus on dialogue issues. If you were writing this to option/sell to a producer, there are a number of things you would want to fix. If you read through a number of the threads in this forum, you will see many discussions of issues that most new writers have: over use of parentheticals ("wrylies"), using progressive tense instead of active present ("is doing" vs. "does"), etc. The central issue is the effective use of dialogue, action and visual description.

To share a clip on this forum, you need to enclose it in [ code]...[ /code] tags. So here is how the first segment of your scene looks:
Code: 
INT. RYAN'S STUDIO APARTMENT - DAY

RYAN is sitting in a chair while facing the mirror belonging to his dresser.  He has a 
gun in his left hand and a photography of a woman and little boy in his right hand.

                           RYAN
            (looking at himself in the 
            mirror and crying hysterically)
    I am so sorry. I have to do this. I can't take 
    being here alone anymore.

PETER THE CLOWN knocks on RYAN's door.  He is dressed in his full clown costume.

                          PETER THE CLOWN
              (knocking intensely and 
              yelling)
      Hey, Dude, I saw you come in here earlier 
      bro, I need your help! It is an emergency! 
      Come on, come on, open up!

Ryan puts the gun in his dresser drawer and puts the photo of the woman and little boy 
on its front side facing down. He wipes the tears from is eyes.

                          RYAN
              (Slowly getting up from the 
              chair and walking to the door)
       Okay, okay, here I come!

Ryan opens the door hesitantly.

                          RYAN (CONT'D)
              (looking at Peter The Clown 
              with a puzzled face)
        What do you want?

                          PETER THE CLOWN
        Do you have a cellphone? My wife just went 
        into labor and I need to call for an ambulance.

                          RYAN
        Don't you have a house phone you could use?

Peter The Clown pushes Ryan out of the way and comes into Ryan's apartment.
....
Parentheticals should be restricted to non-obvious attributes of a dialogue. Actions should be separate action lines. Actors and directors choose how they will deliver a line. So parentheticals are largely ignored when actually filmed. Here is how I might re-write the scene as a script consultant:
Code: 
INT. RYAN'S STUDIO APARTMENT - DAY

The room is dark.  A man sits sobbing in a chair facing the dresser's mirror.

RYAN holds a gun.  In the other hand, a photograph of a woman and little boy.

                           RYAN
      I'm sorry. I have to do this. I can't take being 
      here alone anymore.

Ryan raises the gun towards his head.

Banging knocks on Ryan's door.  

                           MAN (O.S.)
      Bro, I need your help! It is an emergency! 

More urgent banging.

                           MAN (O.S.)
      Come on, come on dude, open up!
      I saw you come in here earlier.

A beat.  Ryan lowers the gun.  More banging.

                           RYAN
      I'm coming!

Ryan stands and puts the gun in his dresser drawer.  He sets the photo face down.

He wipes the tears from his eyes.  He walks to the door and

                          RYAN
        What's the emerg ...?

opens it to find PETER dressed in his full clown costume.

                          PETER
        I need to use your phone!  My wife just 
        went into labor and I need to call for an 
        ambulance.

Peter pushes Ryan aside and storms into the apartment.

                           PETER
        My cell's out of juice.
....
The script should show what the audience sees. Until the door opens, we don't know that Peter is dressed as a clown. I'm also a big fan of keeping character names simple. Action lines should help describe visual shots. The director, of course, often changes these, but it gives a clear focus to the story. Names are capitalized the first time they appear. You can use 'left hand' but if the actor is right handed, it would be switched. It's not a big deal but I just left it open. The other piece is acceptability.

While cellphones frequently run out of battery power, landlines are not affected by power outages normally. So during a blackout, you could still use a landline. Since you mention the blackout later, you need to describe that in the beginning. Which is why I added "The room is dark." It could be dark for any number of reasons but Peter explains why later. Also try to use action-packed words. They save space but also give some spice to your script. There is urgency for Peter. He doesn't just "come into Ryan's room", he pushes him aside and storms in like a bull intent on finding a phone. Overall, it has some comedic potential to help diffuse an emotionally tense scene. It's always dangerous to start a film with negative emotions as it makes it difficult to gain momentum for the rest of the show. Having Peter inject that energy is very much needed here. And that mix of the solemn with the absurd provides a break from bleakness. So overall, the first scene could work depending on how well you handle what follows.

It's an intriguing opener but you need to really develop it well over the next few pages to sell the script. It's a good start. Good luck.
 
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Thanks guys for the advice. I'm realizing I need to keep the action sentences to a minimum. I need to write in the now and not in the future (like I know what is about to happen) and put my self in the audience shoes. Also, to get ride of parentheticals and to be honest, I never cared for them anyway. I thought the action sentences explained enough.

If, there is anymore advice out there I am willing to listen.
 
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I do have a quick question, everyone so far have been giving me great advice on shortening my action sentences and/or paragraphs which I totally agree with. However, in the beginning of Little Miss Sunshine (great movie) it has a ton of action paragraphs. http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/LITTLE_MISS_SUNSHINE.pdfLook! By no means am I comparing myself to Michael Arndt ( my work needs a whole lot of editing) but, what is the difference?
 
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In general you want to convey the most amount of information with the fewest words possible.

Action / description blocks are underrated (there should be a nice balance between these and dialogue in a script), but you will probably always need to strive for more engaging descriptions, cut out the (....)'s and passive tense verbs, etc. And when you have long descriptions, find a way to cut and splice into shorter blocks so it's not a wall of text.

Your first line:
RYAN is sitting in a chair while facing the mirror belonging to his dresser. He has a gun in his left hand and a photography of a woman and little boy in his right hand.

Edited:
RYAN sits in a chair and faces a mirror. He clenches a gun in his left hand. A photograph of a woman and young boy in his right.

-----

Second line:
RYAN
(looking at himself in the mirror and crying hysterically)
I am so sorry. I have to do this. I can't take being here alone anymore.

Notes:
So you probably know by now that the wrylies aren't needed.

Also, the dialogue doesn't work. The old adage "show don't tell" comes to mind; in screenplays, it's no good when the characters tell us what they are thinking for no other reason than to tell us what they are thinking.
Instead, put yourself in RYAN's shoes ...

If you were holding a gun to your head, would you be saying out loud:
"I'm so sorry. I have to do this."

Or would you just point the gun, close your eyes, and shake your head back and forth as the tears flow and you struggle to find the courage to either pull the trigger or fling the gun across the room?

-----

Anyway hope these suggestions help. Screenwriting is very hard, don't be afraid to fail at first in order to become a better writer in the long run.

Good luck!
 
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So, the reason why I have dialogue in that intense moment is because he is not about to commit suicide. This is why I never mentioned him putting the gun up to his head. It is suppose to seem like he is about to commit suicide. Yeah, no, its not going to be some stupid plot where he goes in the kitchen and grab a bag of chips. Then, put them in the microwave and scream die, die, die! THE END. But, anyway, thanks for the advice.
 
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Jessica Sharp said:
I do have a quick question, everyone so far have been giving me great advice on shortening my action sentences and/or paragraphs which I totally agree with. However, in the beginning of Little Miss Sunshine (great movie) it has a ton of action paragraphs. http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/LITTLE_MISS_SUNSHINE.pdfLook! By no means am I comparing myself to Michael Arndt ( my work needs a whole lot of editing) but, what is the difference?
Click to expand...
You can have as many action/description lines as needed. He has a lot more stuff going on. You need to keep a balance to what is key to your scene. Your scene boils down to a guy gets up and answers the door. There is another difference that may not make sense for you at the moment but it involves creating 'breadcrumbs'. In a feature script, a seasoned writer will start laying clues to things that play out later in the script. They are often visual tidbits, "breadcrumbs", that aren't involved in the action or draw serious attention from the actors. But to use them effectively, you already have to have the complete story in your head. Some writers do, others are 'write as you go'.

I agree with Jijenji's comment, though I chose in my example to be more explicit. I debated removing the "I'm sorry" and "I hate to be alone" lines. In this case, we see him sitting there. It's not clear if he killed someone, intends to kill someone, or if he will kill himself. The "I have to do this." is morally ambiguous. It doesn't become clear until he raises the gun. If you had him just study the gun, look at the door when pounded, then set the gun down, it would continue to carry that ambiguity. As a writing device, unresolved ambiguity will heighten the audience involvement. Rather than muddy the water too much, I kept the example close to your original. At this point, focus on getting the formatting down. Dialogue can bring its own challenges.
 
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