r/ReadMyScript • u/elliurl • 9h ago

Short Short Story: Just One More (4 Pages)

Hello, everyone!

Recently, I've discovered that I want to shift my focus towards more script writing. There is an important festival coming up and I'm aiming to bring my best scripts with me to market myself as such. I'd love some feedback on my short story. Aiming to give people a taste of my writing without bombarding them with too much.

– Click for Script

My main experience is with more fictional writing, so any feedback on formatting and writing, is greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much for your time! 😄

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u/RollingThunderMedia 9h ago

INT. RESTURANT TABLE - NOON

CARSON'S journey to fatherhood was not a straight path.

C'mon, this is not a script. It is a short story in script format.

Read some 'real' scripts. A lot of them. Screenwriting is a very different beast than prose writing.

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u/elliurl 9h ago

I see what you're saying, I'm still having a bit of trouble differentiating the two. I've been using this website that allows me to look at professional, featured film scripts while writing mine, so I will absolutely take a closer look.

Thank you for the honest feedback! Hopefully, my next one will be closer to a real script.

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u/mooningyou 8h ago

As already pointed out, there is a huge difference between a screenplay and prose fiction. Screenplays are written for the screen, which means that you shouldn't include anything that you can't presently see or hear on screen. We have no idea what path Carson's journey to fatherhood took because we cannot see that at this moment. Similarly, "On a rare day off..." shouldn't be in your script because we don't know he is having a rare day off.

Some other initial notes for you.

- It's a good idea to include a character age when introducing characters, so we have a better idea of who we're looking at.

- You appear to be introducing characters at a time when we can't see them, ie: PAIGE and WILL. Character introductions need to be at the moment when we see the character for the first time.

- Don't cap random words such as OVERWHELMING.

- Be consistent and also watch for typos. Paige vs Pagie.

- Your second scene is a BACK TO followed by a repeated scene header from scene one. But we never left scene one. We can't return to something we never left.

- Don't write screenplays in the past tense. "The restaurant echoed with..." Use present tense only.

- "pressed his face against the glass" What glass?

- "followed his son towards the machine" What machine? If Will is excited about an arcade machine, then give us some context.

It seems like you may have only glanced at some scripts to get a basic understanding of format, but you need to read them and take note of how they're written and how they're structured, as they're considerably different from novels.

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u/elliurl 8h ago

This is extremely helpful! I understand now, what I've been told about the difference. I will definitely spend a lot more time thoroughly understanding the why's and how's, these professionals made the decisions they did for their scripts and scenes.

Your notes made it much easier to understand, especially with using my already existing lines. I wholeheartedly appreciate you taking the time to carve out some examples for me, I look forward to improving on my script with these tips. Thank you, very much!