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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board  /  Short Drama Scripts  /  A Wiseguy's Final Walk
Posted by: Don, April 21st, 2024, 9:46am
A Wiseguy's Final Walk by Tom Levar - Short, Drama, Mafia - No logline. 9 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Posted by: D.A.Banaszak, April 27th, 2024, 6:38pm; Reply: 1
Normally, I don’t like stories with long monologs but this one flowed nicely. It’s fairly straightforward. The monolog had a natural flow to it. The character sounded natural and believable.

I do have a few comments to offer as advice:

It took me a while to figure out what was going on. Part of the problem was that you renamed the character after he was introduced. There’s no reason that you couldn’t have called him Vinnie from the beginning. I know you were starting him out as a mystery man. I know several writers do this. George Lucas did it with Princess Leia, describing her as “a lovely young girl”. However, she has no lines until she is introduced as Princess Leia.

I admit that you did describe “The man” as “Vincent ‘Vinnie’ Peretti” at the top of page2 and I missed that the first time around. My bad but I stand behind my comment. I would call him Vinnie at the beginning and then describe him fully when we fade in from black.

Your margins for dialog blocks are wrong. While they should be indented in such a way that they stay at the center of the page, they should still be left justified.

It appears that you wrote this with a word processor. Please don’t do that. There’s software specifically written for writing screenplays available. I think you have a gift for bringing characters to life and that becomes easier with script writing software. It sets your page numbers without thinking and you’re your margins and line spacings are properly set based on whether you are writing action, character or scene headings, dialog, parentheticals, etc. It’s all set from pre-configured menus.

There are several packages available. I grabbed this link from a comment that Libby posted for someone:

https://nofilmschool.com/free-screenwriting-software

Last but not least, I have a small issue regarding the use of “we see”, “we hear” and camera direction. In short, don’t do it a whole lot. You can turn off a producer with it.

This link sums up the reasons better than I could:

https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/so-called-screenwriting-rule-do-not-use-we-see-we-hear-b7a7edcd1820

I hope you find my suggestions helpful. I look forward to your next story.
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