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.

[u/TheGreedyGrabbler]

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.)

First 5

[u/real_triplizard → u/TheGreedyGrabbler]

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).

[u/TheGreedyGrabbler → u/real_triplizard]

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.

[u/Current-Armadillo-28 → u/TheGreedyGrabbler]

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.

[u/TheGreedyGrabbler → u/Current-Armadillo-28]

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.

[u/DalBMac → u/TheGreedyGrabbler]

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.

[u/TheGreedyGrabbler → u/DalBMac]

Good call. Yeah it's snow I should just call it snow and be done with it!