A young man with supernatural abilities roams the country on a mysterious mission, pursued by a feisty reporter and agents of a billionaire televangelist determined to manipulate his Christ-like power to devastating effect.
How It Works
You email me the first ten pages of your feature length screenplay (in pdf. format) along with a logline and title. Every Friday, I post one writer's work along with notes and a:
Rating
Trash It (Start over.)
Take Another Pass (You're onto something, but it needs more work.)
More Please (I'm hooked. What happens next?)
Readers will also be able to vote and leave comments on your work.
This week I read the first ten pages of Paul Salvi's SNARE OF THE FOWLER.
That's a solid logline. I can see the movie. Could it be tightened up? Maybe:
A young man on a mysterious mission is pursued by a determined reporter and agents of a wealthy televangelist, determined to manipulate his Christ-like power to devastating effect.
Not much different, but this way you're only describing his powers once. Also, it seems odd to have a billionaire televangelist. I think most folks who attain that degree of wealth have a better scam going than simply bilking believers out of their hard earned cash. Anyways...
we start off outside a church with a voice over of children singing. Inside, we meet 7th grader Tate Simonson who has clearly got the hots for an older woman, 8th grader Sophia Moessinger. Then we cut to the present day (10 years later) where we find Tate in a shitty motel with a woman named Ellie. He's got a photograph of Sophia with him that has, "survived years of hell and abuse."
I'd suggest one of two things here. Spend a little more time on the church scene. Let us see the kids in action. Does she return a glance? Or does she barely register his existence? Give us a sense of what he was like as a child. Or, cut the church scene entirely. Let us wonder about the girl in the photograph. Who is she? Why is she important to him? Sometimes you can show your audience more about a character by not revealing something, giving them just enough so that they want to know more.
The scene in the hotel does this successfully. I'm left wondering who is Ellie? What is her relationship to Tate? What happened to his hands and why all the pills? Though again, a little more time could have been spent here before moving to the next scene.
This is where you lost me. I couldn't get passed the fact that he gets taken into the prison and that he is able to smuggle the blade in beneath his bandages. I go into this is in more detail in my notes, but it seems that things happen here because you need them to happen for the story. That never works. Events need to happen because the characters dictate they happen. Also, there were too many similarities to Tyler Marceca's THE DISCIPLE PROGRAM (the desert prison, the captive serial killer and the slashing of the doctor).
I did like how Tate whispers something to Bankard, to which we are not privy. This creates suspense. But the whole means by which he enters and exits the prison took me out of the story. When writing your next draft I'd ask, does this scene have to take place in a prison? If the answer is yes, then come up with another way of getting Tate in and out. You've got an interesting premise. There's a story here. But in regards to these 10 pages:
(*) Trash It
( ) Take Another Pass
( ) More Please
What did you think?
Next weeks pages from Patrick Sweeney's DEVIL'S DUE.
That's a solid logline. I can see the movie. Could it be tightened up? Maybe:
A young man on a mysterious mission is pursued by a determined reporter and agents of a wealthy televangelist, determined to manipulate his Christ-like power to devastating effect.
Not much different, but this way you're only describing his powers once. Also, it seems odd to have a billionaire televangelist. I think most folks who attain that degree of wealth have a better scam going than simply bilking believers out of their hard earned cash. Anyways...
we start off outside a church with a voice over of children singing. Inside, we meet 7th grader Tate Simonson who has clearly got the hots for an older woman, 8th grader Sophia Moessinger. Then we cut to the present day (10 years later) where we find Tate in a shitty motel with a woman named Ellie. He's got a photograph of Sophia with him that has, "survived years of hell and abuse."
I'd suggest one of two things here. Spend a little more time on the church scene. Let us see the kids in action. Does she return a glance? Or does she barely register his existence? Give us a sense of what he was like as a child. Or, cut the church scene entirely. Let us wonder about the girl in the photograph. Who is she? Why is she important to him? Sometimes you can show your audience more about a character by not revealing something, giving them just enough so that they want to know more.
The scene in the hotel does this successfully. I'm left wondering who is Ellie? What is her relationship to Tate? What happened to his hands and why all the pills? Though again, a little more time could have been spent here before moving to the next scene.
This is where you lost me. I couldn't get passed the fact that he gets taken into the prison and that he is able to smuggle the blade in beneath his bandages. I go into this is in more detail in my notes, but it seems that things happen here because you need them to happen for the story. That never works. Events need to happen because the characters dictate they happen. Also, there were too many similarities to Tyler Marceca's THE DISCIPLE PROGRAM (the desert prison, the captive serial killer and the slashing of the doctor).
I did like how Tate whispers something to Bankard, to which we are not privy. This creates suspense. But the whole means by which he enters and exits the prison took me out of the story. When writing your next draft I'd ask, does this scene have to take place in a prison? If the answer is yes, then come up with another way of getting Tate in and out. You've got an interesting premise. There's a story here. But in regards to these 10 pages:
(*) Trash It
( ) Take Another Pass
( ) More Please
What did you think?
Next weeks pages from Patrick Sweeney's DEVIL'S DUE.
