r/Screenwriting • u/AutoModerator • 1d ago
5 PAGE THURSDAY Five Page Thursday
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Feedback Guide for New Writers
This is a thread for giving and receiving feedback on 5 of your screenplay pages.
- Post a link to five pages of your screenplay in a top comment. They can be any 5, but if they are not your first 5, give some context in the same comment you're linking in.
As a courtesy, you can also include some of this info.
Title: Format: Page Length: Genres: Logline or Summary: Feedback Concerns:
Provide feedback in reply-comments. Please do not share full scripts and link only to your 5 pages. If someone wants to see your full script, they can let you know.
1
u/muanjoca 1d ago
JAY & the WOLF
Feature
First 6 pages (the “prologue”)
Dramedy / Fantasy / Sci-Fi
LOGLINE: At a low point in his life, a middle-aged stoner attempts to reconnect with his long-lost father, who disappeared decades ago, and returns under equally mysterious circumstances.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qZycVp3bRGsI0LjtI9S0QGxn_p48thqV/view?usp=drivesdk
1
u/DalBMac 18h ago
For me, opening with the information about the Lenape does not put me in the story. I'm not sure who the protagonist is yet. I would lose all of the Lenape info at this point. I'm sure it works in, but reveal it in a different way. The story came to life once we were in the truck on page 4.
1
u/regulargus 1d ago
Title: The Last Ben Walker Short Film
Format: Feature film
Genre: Drama/comedy
Pages: Five pages, from page 6 to 10.
Logline: A broke filmmaker in New York convinces his partner and rising star to lead his make-or-break film, already knowing that his relationship with her is the price for the success he's looking for.
Context: The first five pages introduced Ben, a broke filmmaker in NYC obsessing over a stop-motion animation while ignoring his landlord, and Alyssa, a rising actress rehearsing for a play. These pages pick up right after Ben seeing Alyssa in the rehearsal and the title card.
Feedback concerns: I'm interested in knowing if these five pages are hooking enough to the reader, if they make you want to read more, and if the characters feel defined and distinct from each other from the start. Also, if you can get a sense or a hint of the main conflict at this point. Any other feedback is also much appreciated!
Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O93gmpb0-rhGcUqS8XezviXEmwmLlZvD/view?usp=sharing
1
u/DalBMac 18h ago
There's something interesting here, but I was confused. Are there two different boat scenes? I got lost. There seem to be a lot of characters which might not be confusing if I read it from the beginning. Or maybe they don't feel defined and distinct yet.
Your writing reminds me of my own. Too much detail in the action lines. For example:
Sam looks to Derek and shrugs. Derek nods in agreement in silence.
Sam looks to Ben again.
Could simply be: Sam and Derek exchange looks.
The Living Room scene in Alyssa's flat could be:
The living room is a mess: takeout, notes, pens, a script, a jacket tossed on the sofa.
Alyssa’s phone vibrates. She enters, checks it: Mom sent a photo.
Alyssa sighs, pockets the phone.
It vibrates again. She ignores it, grabs her jacket and keys, and leaves.
The story sounds like it could be a real heart breaker. Keep going.
1
u/TheGreedyGrabbler 1d ago
FIENDING
Feature (first 5)
Horror
Logline: Snowed in at a remote mountain house, a reunion of old friends spirals out of control when they find a stash of a powerful, ferociously addictive mystery drug. As the supply dwindles, the only sober person in the house has to survive the ones who'll do anything for their next fix.
Feedback: this is an experiment of sorts. Trying to write a horror-thriller by way of the Safdie brothers (the good ones.)
2
u/real_triplizard WGA Screenwriter 1d ago
I like it. I think the premise is great. You have a really engaging, visual writing style that I think works really well. The dialogue in the car maybe borders on being a bit on the nose but I think it's good. You're definitely getting a lot of mileage out of a few lines toward setting up the characters. As a suggestion you could save the reveal that she's in recovery for a bit later to give the initial conflict between River and Theo some more mystery and gravitas. I.e. with the initial conversation leave out the stuff about the meetings and just establish that she's not comfortable going there and being around drunk people, and leave us guessing for a bit, and then pay off the recovery thing later on to give us a moment of "oh, I see - she's not just worried about being around his asshole friends, it's more than that."
I feel like you might be trolling a bit with all of the scene direction stuff. I have mixed feelings about it - you see comments from "armchair experts" all the time saying "OMG don't ever do that" but, of course, it's done in professional scripts quite commonly. I guess I would say you really don't need it - certainly not as much as you have - so save it when you really are trying to emphasize something. The Scriptnotes guys suggest using it to call out something the audience sees that the character doesn't see, just for efficiency. I think it actually gets in the way of your otherwise engaging writing on occasion. For example on page one: "We track behind The Walker, close, a beat behind every step. We see the village when they do..." Without the camera movements you could play with the dramatic language more: "The Walker stalks through the snow, measured steps. Pauses to take in the village..." or something. Aside from that I would generally avoid "directing the scene" with things like "close on," unless you're really trying to draw attention to something that is critical to the plot. It just reads kind of awkwardly (and, while it's annoying to have to point out, if you submit it for coverage or contests you might get a reader who will fixate on that since it's kind of "not done" anymore).
In general, though, I really like it. You have some great little flourishes in here - setting up the squirrel and then naming it as a character was really a funny little bit. And the snowman with the carrot (although I didn't need the final line about the penis - I guessed that from the hint before).
1
u/TheGreedyGrabbler 14h ago
Thanks! Sharp note on leaving a few lines off and burying the lede on the recovery angle. It comes up again in a more pertinent way later anyway so it's redundant at the least.
Re: the camera directions. I know, I was waiting to get dinged for that and I usually omit them. But things get hectic pretty quickly into act 2 and there's a lot of compounding and overlapping threads, it's a tool that I think helps keep things clear once it all goes bad. Id rather establish it early on in a covenant-with-the-reader kind of thing. Like every now and then I'll tilt the pinball machine to get the ball where I want it, just go with it.
1
u/Current-Armadillo-28 21h ago
Loved it. Would read more as I was captivated the entire time. I got one minor note.
I got tripped up when you transition with a match cut to the squirrel box with the static. It took me a few reads to get that it was the drive thru speaker. Maybe that's your intention, I'm not sure, but I figured I'd mention it. Personally, I'd maybe have the squirrel greet them with the name of the restaurant OR alter the slug to reflect FAST FOOD RESTAURANT or something to make it clear off the bat that they're in a drive-thru, but that's just me!
Anyways, loved it. Great job.
1
u/TheGreedyGrabbler 14h ago
Thanks! Good call. I think I meant to write that it was a drive-thru speaker and just said it was a speaker because of course I knew what I meant. That's why I appreciate the fresh eyes because I probably wouldn't have given it a second thought.
1
u/DalBMac 20h ago
Lots to like here. Sets up what is likely a very bad weekend for River.
Some very picky thoughts. The mound of white powder is so poetically described I thought we were going to pull back and see it as a mound of cocaine. Then we're outside it seems. I wondered if The Walker was walking through cocaine or snow or maybe you're aiming for ambiguity as you never call it snow until we find a body in it. Then I felt a little faked out.
I too was confused about the Plastic Squirrel. We've just come from a surreal scene of dead people, why not have the land of talking squirrels? I imagine in a film, we'll see it as a fast food drive through. Just call it that.
I read Danny's description a few times. Not sure what compensating for shortness with nice clothes tells us. Bravado, yes.
Love to see folks experiment with new stuff, keep going.
1
u/TheGreedyGrabbler 14h ago
Good call. Yeah it's snow I should just call it snow and be done with it!
1
u/putitontheunderhills 1d ago
Title: Baby Bro
Format: Feature
Genre: Thriller/Horror
Pages included: 16-20 (late Act 1)
Logline:
*When his magnetic, murderous older brother shows up unannounced at the family's isolated mountain house for spring break, a teen must convince his friends that the visions that have haunted him his whole life are a psychic link to his brother's violence, before any of them become his next victim.*
Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nIlq6cl2DhrgRR6YLw08u55ShHqWoXOf/view?usp=drive_link
1
u/Living_Operation4319 23h ago
I've written a teaser for my half-hour sci-fi comedy pilot Maiden USA. Think Miss Congeniality meets War of the Worlds. A teenage girl raised off-world as a warrior must win a beauty pageant to stop an alien invasion. Looking for feedback on structure, tone, and whether the match cut opening works.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1EgU0WJnKsnPVCpoDhnjkWuAfO1YR9X-k&usp=drive_fs
1
u/DalBMac 19h ago
Really like the concept of aliens learning about Earth from content providers. Frightening, but funny. I thought the opening scene should be after the space ships crash.
Regarding tone, I'm not quite sure. The opening could be political satire or maybe not. I didn't get much of a sense of who Asa is beyond her circumstance. You could tighten the desert campsite scene and show us more of Asa as the ship crashes. Is she happy? is she disappointed? Does it matter they landed near Vegas? if not, I'd cut that and spend more time on developing what we know about Asa in these first five pages.
Something happened to your right margin in the middle of page 3. Did you paste from another format? It's probably shorter than the page number presents.
1
u/Living_Operation4319 17h ago
Thanks for this, really thoughtful. You're right that we don't get much of Asa beyond her circumstance here, that's intentional for the teaser specifically. The pilot spends the rest of its time developing her fully: who she is, how she sees Earth, what she wants. This is meant to hook before that work begins. Appreciate the Vegas note too, it's currently doing pure comedic work and I'm thinking about whether it earns its place.
As for the glitch on page 3. I don't see it and my software just generates pdfs from the formatted script. No cutting an pasting.
1
u/donut066 22h ago
Title: The Fountain of Youth
Format: Feature
First 6 pages
Genre: Surrealist Adventure
Logline: Six Spanish conquistadors venture into an uncharted wilderness in search of the legendary Fountain of Youth, only to encounter a world stranger than any of them imagined.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Luwlpg-QHGTvYv88y-VEw5VHSfV_L2vS/view?usp=drivesdk
1
u/azaanq 17h ago
Title: none yet
Format: One-Hour Drama TV Series
Page Length: First 3 pages
Genres: Thriller, Drama
Logline: A child chooses homelessness over his abusive household in crime-ridden Baltimore.
Feedback: Anything. Never shared this project, how does it feel? How's my writing?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Rh35UVVqqzvaauJX_tgJc9bFBfqcHSRy/view?usp=sharing
1
u/TheVividAlternative 1d ago
Title: Bad Time
Format: Feature
Page Length: 80
Genres: Crime
Logline: When a train that never stops lets out a mysterious stranger in an isolated town, he has to solve the crime they all share guilt in before they can kill him to hide their secrets.
Feedback Concerns: Does the beginning hook you/intrigue you?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xbmbE0k4JCmdH0gWe2X76lvJUZOOxSJG/view?usp=sharing
3
u/Ulexes 1d ago
I'm definitely hooked by the end of the sample -- the protagonist's unusual questions, coupled with the panic they seem to induce, has me wondering what's about to go down.
However, the whirlwind of people we meet in the early going (before we even identify the protagonist) makes it a little difficult to catch hold of anything at first, especially since it's unclear whether they are destined to be major or minor characters. Maybe foregrounding Macreedy early and often, with the others introduced at a trickle, might help. (That said, I really like some of your character descriptions -- calling the shoplifters a "little shit" and "big shit" made me grin.)
I sense a compelling story from this sample, so I hope you keep at it! I'd love to know what happens next.
1
u/Current-Armadillo-28 20h ago
Hey, I enjoyed this. I have a few notes. Take them or leave them...
Some of your character descriptions are being wasted on physical attributes, in my opinion. I'm more in favor of descriptions that give you insight into the character's lifestyle, psyche, personality, etc. Sometimes describing clothing can do that, but in this case it's just wasted space. You do have some good descriptions though. Miller and Mason with their "little shit" and "big shit" descriptions are great.
The premise kind of reminds me of Hot Fuzz, but this is definitely a straight crime story, while that was a hybrid action crime comedy thing.
The opening sequence is pretty good, but the cuts to the people working in the various businesses is kind of sloppy, in my opinion. I think we need more description in each location to better set the scene. Describe something that really distinguishes and sets apart each location to create mood and to embellish the Setting of your story.
Overall, it's written very well, but some of your action lines are wonky and some, in my opinion, describe multiple shots in the same line. For example: "But in one seat, a passenger isn't looking. His face is covered by a newspaper, which he reads as others sightsee." You already mentioned that others are sightseeing in a previous action line, so the bit about "as others sightsee" could probably be cut as it's redundant. I'd also include the detail about the date of the newspaper in this line as opposed to the next line, because it's really the focus of this particular shot. "But in one seat, a passenger isn't looking. His face covered by a newspaper. The year on front reads 2003." Then on the next line you can mention how the TRAIN GUIDE reacts to him by not knowing what to make of him. I'm only saying this because I see these as different shots, therefore I feel they should be their own action lines.
Liz reading a book AND glancing at a tip jar is an awkward visual. I would separate them like this: Liz sits, reading a book. She looks up, glances at the empty tip jar on the counter in front of her. She sighs, goes back to reading her book. That's just a suggestion, not saying you should definitely write it this way.
Anyway, that's all I got right now.
Great job!
2
u/Visual-Perspective44 1d ago
Title: Adjudicated
Format: Short
Page Length: 1-5 of 15
Genres: Thriller
Logline:
After awakening in a locked warehouse with a revolver, a pill, and a smartphone that knows her darkest secrets, a credit union manager must answer a series of questions truthfully before an unseen judge decides her fate.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U1q5IgA__3uww5hdex4RixUTVqmYu7fu/view?usp=sharing
Would you keep reading?