thething912
Novelist
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 Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 9:30 pm Post subject: The life of crime. |
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I WOULD LIKE A REVIEW TELLING ME HOW TO ENHANCE IT. THANKS. SHOULD THIS BE RATED PG-13 OR R?
“THE LIFE OF CRIME.”
Setting the screen, after losing his job Felipe is thinking about converting to the life of crime but this new occupation won’t be easy. Felipe is 20 years old and was working for a million dollar company. Molly is Felipe’s girlfriend she been dating him for about a year.
Act one: Fired.
Scene one: Sadness.
Setting: The living room.
Felipe is depressed by the fact that he lost his job and is talking to his girlfriend about it.
Felipe: upset: “I can’t believe I lost my job."
Molly: “It will be okay honey.”
Felipe: not agreeing to what Molly is saying: “No It won’t, I’m going to lose everything.”
Molly: “Can’t you just look for another job?”
Felipe: “I already tired that, they don’t want me, they think I’m a failure .”
Molly, “You’re not a failure.”
Felipe:“I know. How do you convince the company that I’m not.”
Molly: “You can’t.”
Felipe: sarcastically: “Well that’s helpful.”
Molly: apologizing: “Sorry, but I don’t know how to help you.”
Felipe walks out of the room.
Act Two: The suicide plan.
Scene One: Depressed.
Felipe has become very depressed after losing his job and is now thinking about ending his life.
Felipe: very depressed: “What is there is live for now that I lost everything?”
Felipe starts to pour gas onto himself when his girlfriend sees what he is doing.
Molly: yelling: Felipe! “What do you think you’re doing!?”
Felipe: “You can’t help, there is nothing left for me.”
Molly: “What about the life of crime?”
Felipe is shocked by what he is hearing.
Felipe: “Honey, you know I would never be a criminal.”
Molly: “My last boyfriend made over one million dollars as a criminal.”
Felipe: “Why didn't’t you ever tell me this?”
Molly: “Because, you would have left me.”
Felipe: “Oh.”
Act Three: The criminal start.
Scene One: Pick pocketing.
Felipe decides to become a pick pocket.
He sets off for the streets. He sees a woman carrying a bag and decides to take it. He pills out a gun and demands the bag.
Felipe: In a demanding voice “Give me the bag!”
The woman has fear in her eyes as she hands Felipe the bag. Felipe takes the bag and runs off with it. The woman yells for help and a man hears her.
Woman1: “A man just stole my bag.”
Man1: “Where is he?”
Woman1: pointing: “Over there.”
Man one runs after Felipe and manages to reach him the two men start to fight.
Felipe: yelling: “Idiot! Can’t you see that I have a gun?”
Man1: “Yeah.”
Felipe shots the man; the man dies.
A person seeing the killing decides to call the police.
The police show up within five minutes but Felipe is already gone. The police are now investigating the murder.
Police1: “What was the time of death?”
Police2: “About five minutes ago.”
Police1: “How did he die?”
Police2: “He was shot in the chest.”
Police1 is now talking to a witness.
Police1: “What did the guy look like?”
Witess1: “He was about 6 feet tall and was wearing blue jeans and had on a red hat.”
The police officer thanks the woman.
Police1: “Thanks for the information.”
Witess1: “You’re welcome.”
Scene two: Planning a heist.
Felipe is panning out a bank robbery and hope to hire some people.
Felipe: talking on the phone: “Hello! Would you be interested in pulling off a bank robbery?”
Man2: “Yeah. Witch bank are we robbing?
Felipe: “The fifth national bank.”
Man2: “Okay”
Felipe: “Do you know where we can get a get away car?”
Man2: “You can use mine.”
Felipe, “Okay, good.”
Scene Three: The stake out.
Felipe and his employee are now staking out the bank
Man2: “So when is this all going to go to go down?”
Felipe: “Tomorrow.”
Man2, “Okay.”
Scene Five: The heist.
The two men enter the bank Felipe pulls out a gun and demands the money.
Felipe: “Give me all your money!”
The woman behind the counter hit the robbery button. The work fills the bag with the money and puts a ink bomb in it.
Felipe and his employee walk out of the bank with the money. The police show up.
Felipe: “Oh crap, it’s the police.”
Felipe and the man run into the car and start to drive away quickly. The police chase them.The car Felipe is in is going 130 miles for hour. Felipe and the police start to zig zag in the traffic. Felipe hits a car but manages to keep driving. The chase goes for a hour until Felipe drives onto a small road and the police are no longer able to chase him.
Scene Six: Back at home.
Felipe find out that there was an ink bomb in his bag and starts to get very ticked off.
Felipe: “Can you believe the luck we have? They put an ink bomb in our bag.”
Man2: “Darn it.”
Scene Seven: The Tv.
Felipe is watching the tv. when the news comes on about the bank robbery.
Tv: “Police are now looking for the people responsible for the bank robbery that took place earlier today.”
Felipe decides to turn off the tv.
Felipe: talking to himself: “I wonder how far the police are in their investigation.”
Man2 walks in.
Man2: “Did you see the new? They are talking about us?”
Felipe: “Yeah.”
Man2: “My brother operates a drug selling business. Would you be interested in making some money?”
Felipe: “How much are we talking?”
Man2: “About one million dollars.”
Felipe: “Okay, I’ll do it.”
Man2: “Good, we will meet him tomorrow.”
Scene Eight: The drug trafficking business.
Felipe goes to man2's brother house.
Felipe: “Nice to meet you.”
Man2 brother’s name is John.
John: “Nice to meet you also.” |
Last edited by thething912 on Fri Nov 23, 2007 4:22 am; edited 4 times in total |
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bubblewrapped
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| Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 12:50 am Post subject: |
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OK, for starters, I know next to nothing about script-writing so this is mostly going to be about plot/dialogue/character with a little bit of spelling and formatting thrown in XD
1. Colons are your friends! Use : instead of , to mark your dialogue (e.g, FELIPE: I can’t believe I lost my job... as opposed to Felipe, “I can’t believe I lost my job...”). That way you don’t need to use speech marks either. I don’t think that’s done in scripts. Also, might be handy to CAPITALIZE your speakers’ names.
2. Trim things down. You’re telling us a lot of things you don’t need to. For example, in the beginning Felipe tells us “I can’t believe I lost my job I’ve been working for that company for two years now. I’m going to lose everything the house, you, my money, everything we own.” Now, there are several things wrong with this sentence. First, the punctuation is off. Revised, it should read: “I can’t believe I lost my job! I’ve been working for that company for two years now. I’m going to lose everything: the house, you, the house, my money, everything we own.” Secondly, who says stuff like this? I mean, unless Felipe is (a) clairvoyant and (b) TRYING to lose his girlfriend, then he would not say he’s gonna lose her. Well, it feels off to me, anyway. Instead, try something like “I can’t believe I lost my job! I worked there for almost two years, and now I’ve lost everything.”
3. With script, I figure it is even more important to infuse your dialogue with mood and emotion. So if I were you, I would re-read a lot of this and really think about how it sounds to you. Does Felipe sound whiny or upset? Is Molly conciliatory or impatient? This can also help to develop your characters beyond robots who just say what you think they should be saying without any feeling whatever. Also examine your word choice. Who is Felipe? Where does he come from? If he’s, say, Spanish, maybe he reverts to Spanish when he gets angry. Maybe he swears a lot. Maybe Molly works at a biker bar and has a tendency to slip into slang. Basically, you need to liven up your dialogue a lot. I’m not getting a sense of who these people are.
4. One thing I did notice is that you describe scenes as “Felipe is depressed by the fact that he lost his job and is talking to his girlfriend about it“ and similar. I worked on a play at the local theatre once as the prompt and basically the script we worked with described scenes more practically. So instead of them talking (since we can learn that from the dialogue already) it would go something like this: SCENE 1: FELIPE and MOLLY are sitting in the lounge. MOLLY is doing the ironing. FELIPE is trying to read a book but he is too upset to concentrate. Finally he puts the book down. Granted, that’s a little exaggerated, but I think you see what I mean. Instead of just mentioning them talking, I think you’d want to give more concrete details so that the actors/directors etc. understand how you see the scene and where it’s happening, etc.
5. Your scenes are too short. In a novel, they’d be about half a page. I realize you’ve probably just jotted this down quickly, but I think you could definitely improve it by lengthening the scenes significantly. I would also make it clear where the transition comes in and give directions for that. You want to be careful, as otherwise you’ll have the scenery changing every five minutes just for two seconds of dialogue. You might want to roughly plan the important scenes/elements first and try to arrange them so that they don’t change in place and time too haphazardly.
Basically, it was OK. But you definitely need to work on realism and building up your characters. I would also try to introduce some more inner conflict. How are we supposed to believe Felipe would not become a criminal when he has no resistance to doing so beyond that one line?!
I will look forward to seeing how you progress with this. Hope that helps!
Cheers,
~bubbles
PS: you might get more critiques if you cut it down so that you only posted one scene at a time. Some people dont like reading really long things XD |
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"Life is like a box of chocolates - it is overpriced, will make you sick if you have it too quickly, and if other people see you with it, they will try to take bits of it away from you." -- I Moved Your Cheese
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kshsj777
Writer
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Joined: 16 Oct 2007
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300 Points
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| Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 11:03 pm Post subject: |
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First of all, the scenes are too short and to be honest, not very realistic. You need more description of the events. Felipe doesn't seem real at all. One minute he's worried he's losing his job and the next he's committing crime? He's not in a desperate enough situation to consider it.
When I read this part
Felipe: “Why didn’t you ever tell me this?”
Molly: “Because, you would have left me.”
Felipe: “Oh.”
I laughed. It was SO FUNNY! Maybe you should turn this into a comedy. |
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