SHATTERED by Dawn McCaslin

A seemingly perfect life is destroyed after a wife discovers her husband committed an unspeakable act. As the investigation and trial unwind, she must attempt to put her life back together amidst a shocking revelation that will reveal ugly truths no one could have suspected.


How It Works

Email Rob the first ten pages of your feature length screenplay (in pdf. format) along with a logline and title. Every Friday, one of our reviewers posts 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?)

Somebody Shoot This!

Readers then vote and comment on your work.

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Review of “SHATTERED”
Reviewed by Jim Newman (posted Sept 24th, 2012)
(Screenplay | Thriller/Drama, First 10 Pages)

“Logline left me thinking of what this unspeakable act could be, but the first ten pages fall short of delivering.”

I feel the logline could use some clean-up. Loglines are never an easy task, but based on the first twelve, there appears to be a gap in description and the language deserves to be as colorful as your character descriptions.

Original Logline: “A seemingly perfect life is destroyed after a wife discovers her husband committed an unspeakable act. As the investigation and trial unwind, she must attempt to put her life back together amidst a shocking revelation that will reveal ugly truths no one could have suspected.”

Let’s take a few moments to dissect this:

• What I like: we can identify the protagonist, the antagonist, and the conflict.
• The “unspeakable act” has a hook to it – draws me in and makes me wonder what in the world could have the husband done to completely rattle his wife’s world.
• I would omit the second line since (1) you want to make every effort to keep your logline to one sentence. I understand that some folks say “one to two” lines, but try to hit your message in one line even if it borderlines on being a run-on sentence. Also, I presume the “unspeakable act” will be met with an investigation and will be shocking revelation, so this simply restates the first line.
• Here’s a suggestion to clean up your logline:

Tweaked Logline: “A seemingly perfect marriage is shattered after a wife discovers her husband has committed an unspeakable act that reveals vile truths that no one could have suspected.”

Summary:

The story begins with introducing husband and wife Matthew and Greta Forrester along with their teenage son, Jack. They’re in the middle of getting some photos done for a newspaper or magazine article of some sort.

Sean, your typical football jock, arrives and stays for dinner. He’s has a crush on Mrs. Forrester, but seems innocent enough.

Pages three through seven portray an award celebration where Greta is presented with a sort of humanitarian award. We learn that the Forresters have some connections with folks in “high places”, so they’re obviously socialites among powerful company.

An old friend of Greta’s, Rebekka, shows up at the Forrester house with some bags – she’s leaving her husband and their volatile relationship.

Page ten brings us to the conclusion of this review. Greta returns home, presumably unexpectedly while Matthew works from his home office. She saunters into the house, starts undressing, obviously looking for some play time. She sneaks into Matthew’s office to surprise him, but stumbles upon a shocking moment: Matthew is masturbating to a video of Sean naked, showering. This is where page ten closes.

Feedback:

The format meets industry standards and the characters are given colorful descriptions.

Regrettably, that’s all the first ten pages provide. In general, the first page reveals no purpose or relation to the story except it lays a foundation of a “perfect life”. However, this could be shown with concise imagery; i.e. gorgeous house, pictures on a mantle of a happy, smiling family. The dialogue with the photographer serves no purpose and does not contribute to the story, in my opinion. Without the benefit of having the read the logline, I would have no clue who the protagonist is: the wife, the husband, the son? This needs to be clarified and blunt.

Also, page one should provide a geographic location – where does this gorgeous house reside? Let me see and make a connection to the region.

At the page three point, there’s still no purpose to the preceding scenes. What is the purpose? Who’s the protagonist (still wouldn’t know if not for the logline)? How does this contribute to the story in the form of a hook and push us to the catalyst?

Pages three through seven drags on with the award dinner. Does not reveal anything about the characters, but does give some insight into their world: relationships with powerful community leaders and other socialites.

Page ten reveals the “unspeakable” act”, but it feels forced. Of course, it doesn’t necessarily have to be on the nose with prior exposition or dialogue, but a character’s actions leading up to this point should foreshadow some sort of surprise in this sense. The masturbation scene feels out of left field. Give us a foreshadowing scene such as Matthew having a borderline flirtatious dialogue with Sean … or something with the dance when Matthew cuts in on Sean and Greta. Also, not sure how Sophia’s character will play into this story. Perhaps as a B story, but this is not clear – I’m guessing she secretly has a shared crush with Jake despite the fact that she’s dating Sean.

Overall, this script needs to be overhauled, but has potential – the logline has a fun dramatic thriller flavor to it. Just remember: be concise, you could benefit from the use of an outline, and “kill your babies” – be sure to start page one as late into your storyline as possible.

TYPOS & GRAMMAR & OTHER NOTES

CONT’D is arguably no longer considered standard. So adjust your software to remove all CONT’D from the dialogue.

Wherever possible, replace “and” in the action lines with a comma. Just makes the read smoother.

CAP characters as they are introduced only if they will have dialogue. Page three introduces Celeste who has dialogue, but is not capped. Also, page nine introduces Greta’s secretary, but has a speaking line where we learn her name is Sarah. Introduce her as SARAH, not SECRETARY, but form your character description as: “Greta’s secretary, SARAH, early 20’s, pops her head into the office.”

Please refer to PDF with my notes. And I invite you to reach out to me with any follow-up questions or comments.

Rating:

Trash it (start over).

Thank you for sharing your work with us! And don’t give up on your concept!

- Jim Newman -

VILE: A LOVE STORY by Victor Bornia

There are two monsters prowling the streets of LA: a serial killer raised to believe that women are nothing more than demonic sexual predators, and a peculiar young woman...who also happens to be a Demonic Sexual Predator. When an unexpected connection brings them together, love inspires them to focus their dark attentions on those who deserve it most.

How It Works

Email Rob the first ten pages of your feature length screenplay (in pdf. format) along with a logline and title. Every Friday one of us (or a guest reviewer) posts 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?)

Somebody Shoot This!

Readers then vote and comment on your work.

Want to join Feedback Friday as a regular reviewer? (Still looking for one more regular reviewer.)

New writers' lab for more discreet feedback. 

 for access.



This week's Dan takes a look at the 1st 10 pages  of Victor Bornia's 
VILE: A LOVE STORY.



Today's pages come Victor Bornia, and I believe this script as a whole made the top 6.5% in the Nicholls Fellowship this year. Let's see what we got...

So, first, from the concept alone we don't get much sense of a "movie". Two people with similar interests meet up and do pretty much the same thing they've been doing already. There's no conflict or irony implicit in the premise. No goals, no stakes, no urgency. Right off the bat, you got that working against you.

We open on an L.A. city street where ladies of the night are on the prowl. A young, guilt-stricken, self-flagellating religious boy named Albin watches the girls from his parked car, dealing with his inner demons: should I solicit one, or shouldn't I? Well, after a police raid sends the hookers scurrying away in every direction, Albin is presumably saved from having to make a decision. He's "in the clear" - that is, until a late-arriving prostitute shows up at his car. Albin is too weak to resist this girl's charm, and the two end up doing the deed in Albin's car.

And afterwards, Albin grabs an ICE PICK - and murders the girl! Why? We'll find out, but at this point, we know by his reaction that he's at least tormented by that decision as well. Poor kid.

You can gauge quite a bit by just a first scene sometimes. This intro feels strange. It's presumably supposed to be about our lead character murdering a stray prostitute, but the first page and a half are devoted almost solely to depicting a police officer soliciting a hooker, in detail, then calling in his buddy's nearby for an official raid. Then showing the raid. It's not even really shown from the POV of Albin. Unless this police procedure is crucial to your film later on, cut that stuff out. Just get to the story. The pages feel direction-less already.

Also, they feel overwritten. The author goes to good lengths to describe these prostitutes, the streetlights, the cars, whatever - when really these things have nothing to do with the story (again, I'm assuming that here - but given the premise, I doubt any of these elements will come into play later). Make it lean, people! Get to the point! Don't give us details unless they are absolutely crucial to your narrative! 

After Albin kills this chick, and presumably dumps her body or hides it somewhere, he comes home to find his psychotic religious mother reading Scripture at the dinner table. Albin, clearly a mama's boy and her psychological victim, confesses his dirty nighttime deeds (both of them). The mother essentially tells her son that it's okay he slept with a prostitute, just as long as he killed her afterwards. 

I didn't like the mother's quick dismissal of her son's murder.  It didn't feel real. Even if this woman is completely nuts, and condones and/or approves of her son's serial killer life, she'd still be grilling him on who he was seen by, if he took care of the body, etc. I don't get the impression these two dum dums are competent enough to be part of a serial killer plot. It feels like they should have been caught a long time ago.

The rest of the pages show Albin at work as a pest control employee, battling possums in an attic and chasing one across a neighborhood, then bumping into and chatting with twelve year old girls on two separate occasions...huh? Talk about a WTF turn of events.

I will say that in these pages, there is some nice prose, some vivid descriptions, some passable dialogue. There's good writing here, I don't want to take that away from him - but it's just not a movie right now. I have no idea what it's about. I don't understand the tone. I don't understand where it's going. I don't buy the logistics. There may be things made clearer later, but I can only comment on what I have.

Thankfully, we have ALL been at this point, and we will all more than likely fall into these kinds of problems again and again. The important thing is to keep writing, keep learning, and keep reading. As it is, if it were myself I would say set aside this script for now, work on finding a better concept, and just keep at it!

Cheers,
Dan

Dan's Notes

What did you think of Victor's 1st 10 pages?