Young Writers Society

Here is the second act! So that's another commercial break! Haha, oh TV.



ACT TWO

OVER BLACK--

MARTIN, 2010

EXT. CORN FIELD-MARTIN, INDIANA - DAY

The golden fields are full grown and almost ready to be harvested. The sky is as blue and clear as it gets, with the sun like a daphodille floating half way up the sky.

Two boys come bursting through the corn stalks, disrupting the corn stalks, they are about seven.

A girl a year or so younger follows, a little slower, her blonde braids bouncing.

SARAH BOBBY RAY we’re not supposed to be here!

One of the boys holds up a pink diary and waves it in the air teasingly.

SARAH BOBBY RAY, give it back!

The boys burst into a sprint, laughing even louder.

But SUDDENLY they stop dead in their tracks.

They stare down at something O.S., horrifying from the looks on their faces. BOBBY RAY's mouth drops open and the diary fall from his fingertips.

SARA catches up with the sternest of looks on her face. She reaches down and snatches up the diary.

SARAH BOBBY RAY you know were not supposed to be out here, you just wait till I tell mama! She's gunna-

But our imagines are left to decide what type of punishment BOBBY RAY will endure because SARAH follows their gaze and her eyes too fall on the horrible sight O.S. rendering her silent.

The three stand there, unmoving, stunned.

EXT. CORN FIELD-MARTIN, INDIANA - CONTINUOUS- AERIAL VIEW

CALEB is lying in the middle of the corn field, his clothes covered in blood. The corn stalks are flattened all around him for about three five feet out.

The three children are standing there, staring down at him.

Then, BOBBY RAY burst off heading back from where they came. The other two follow.

SARA forgets her diary.

EXT. COFFEE SHOP-MARTIN - DAY

Two police officers are standing outside of the local COFFEE SHOP, chatting and sipping their brews.

As we get closer we see that the one with the Sheriff badge pinned to his chest is someone we recognize. Someone with an award winning smile. PETE.

He's older, hasn't shaved in a day or two, and there are bags under his eyes. He's PETE but he's a darker PETE, he's that PETE that emerged when CALEB brought up HARRY in the car on the way to the party eight years ago.

His cell phone rings and he sets his coffee down to answer it.

PETE WARNER.

OFFICER HERTZ O.S. Hey, SHERIFF, your kids just ran in here with the Gardener's boy goin on about a dead guy in the corn fields behind your place.

PETE Are you serious?

OFFICER HERTZ O.S. Yeah. They seem pretty shook up. Might be a hitch hiker, maybe you wanna check it out?

PETE Yeah, send 'em home, I'm on my way.

PETE hangs up his phone and grabs his coffee before climbing into the police car.

EXT. PETE'S HOUSE-MARTIN, INDIANA - MOMENTS LATER

PETE pulls into his driveway where an older KAILEY is sitting on the porch holding a crying SARAH in her lap.

BOBBY RAY and the other boy are sitting on the front steps heads hanging, obviously they've been reprimanded.

PETE gets out of the car and walks ominously up to the porch. BOBBY RAY and his friend know they're in for it now. They winced when KAILEY told them "Just wait till your father gets home."

PETE (stops right in front of the boys) Alright you two, what did I tell you about playing in the cornfields? And making up stories.

BOBBY RAY It ain't stories daddy, there was a man.

PETE What did he look like.

SARAH (sniffles) He looked like that boy in the picture daddy.

PETE What picture?

SARAH The one by your chair, where you're wearing the funny hats.

PETE looks at KAILEY then rushes into the house.

He comes back out a few moments later holding a picture.

He shows it to SARAH.

PETE Like this guy?

She nods.

PETE Stay here.

He hands the picture to KAILEY. It's of PETE and CALEB at graduation.

PETE un-holsters his gun.

KAILEY Don't be ridiculous PETE.

He starts into the corn field.

EXT. CORN FIELD-MARTIN, INDIANA - MOMENTS LATER

PETE is walking through the field, gun held at his side. He know's it's insane, SARAH is just a little girl and CALEB is dead. But there's a shard of hope in him.

He breaks through to where the stalks have been flattened and his breath catches.

PETE looks down at CALEB's body, it's him. He's still wearing that stupid leather jacket, he looks exactly the same, like he hasn't aged a day.

PETE falls on his knees next to CALEB and tosses the gun aside very unprofessionally.

He wipes the summer sweat from his brow and lets out one shallow sob.

He thinks it's a sick joke, or that he's gone crazy, but either way his emmotions are shot.

Hopefull, he check's CALEB's pulse, nothing.

More tears fall down his face and he mutters...

PETE No, no, no, no, no.

He takes in a deep breathe.

PETE Pull yourself together. CALEB is dead. (he's reassuring himself.) He died eight years ago.

He turns away from CALEB's body and stands up. CALEB is O.S. now.

PETE picks up his radio. He clears his throat and puts the radio up next to his mouth.

PETE OFFICER HERTZ we do indeed have a body in the cornfield behind my house. It's nobody from town, probably just a hitchhiker, but he's dead. Send an ambulance and put the paper work on my desk.

PETE slides the radio back onto his belt and rests his hands on his hips, not chancing a look at CALEB.

Glancing down he realizes his gun is laying discarded on the ground.

He leans down to pick it up. But no sooner do his fingers grasp the gun then a cold hand grabs and wraps around PETE's wrist.

He jumps and stumbles backwards, gun in hand.

He turns with the barrel pointed at CALEB.

PETE Put your hands on your head!

CALEB stares up at PETE alarmed and confused. He thinks back to the last thing he remembers, the party.

CALEB doesn't know it's been eight years. CALEB doesn't know he died.

CALEB PETE, is that you? What the hell did you give me last night, those pills I mean?

PETE What the hell are you talking about?

CALEB attempts to stand but PETE reacts by cocking the gun.

PETE Don't move! Put your hands on your head.

CALEB finds his feet.

CALEB What's gotten into you? We're a little too old for cops and robbers PETE.

PETE wavers, he had just convinced himself he was insane because it couldn't be CALEB, but why would a hitchhiker say that?

CALEB What are you wearing? Jesus I've got a headache. What the hell happened last night?

PETE Last...last night?

CALEB Uh, yeah. At the party?

PETE Party?

CALEB Are you still drunk? Please don't point that at me, I wouldn't even want you to if you were sober.

PETE CALEB?

CALEB No, the Easter bunny.

PETE realizes his arms were slowly falling but he instinctually brings the gun back up, aiming at CALEB's heart.

CALEB (puts his hands up) You're starting to freak me out.

PETE Freak you out? You're supposed to be dead!

CALEB I feel like I died. You know there's a reason I never went to parties in high school, you wake up in corn fields.

PETE Oh my god. (beat) CALEB, do you know what year it is?

CALEB You're really out of it aren't you? It's 2002, we just graduated.

PETE drops the gun and rubs his face with a shaky hand.

PETE CALEB, look at your shirt.

CALEB looks down at his white v-neck covered in blood, and finds a small hole at his heart, bullet sized.

CALEB's mind flashes back to a face, GRIFF's face, a smug smile spread over it just before a loud bang and a black out.

CALEB Something happened last night.

PETE No CALEB not last night. Last night I tucked my kids into bed and then sat and watched a movie with my wife. Last night you were dead.

CALEB I don't understand.

PETE I can't believe I was so stupid. They told me you could have faked it, that you probably did.

PETE is talking more to himself now.

CALEB Fake what? And you didn't honestly just say kids, and wife?

PETE Yeah I did.

CALEB You are still drunk.

PETE CALEB we went to that party eight years ago! The last time I saw you, you went to look around. You died CALEB, you were murdered. You wanna know what year it is? Not 2002 that's for damn sure.

CALEB What?

PETE Today is August first, 2010.

END OF ACT TWO

Hello there

BOBBY RAY's mouth drops open and the diary fall from his fingertips.

SARAH BOBBY RAY you know were not supposed to be out here,

I really don't know anything about writing scripts but this was really well done. The story too is just amazing and well written. I loved your stage directions, I could picture everything perfectly.

Good job

OH MY GOSH KEEP WRITING PLEASE!! you have me hooked. this is awesome and should be made into a movie or play one day for sure!

Thanks guys!

I'm designing it for tv actually, If it gets good enough I want to use it in my application for a TV writing program thing. This is just the first draft though. I was gunna post the rest of it but I guess there's this two posts/48 hours thing. I haven't been on here forever though haha.

Thanks again!

Love and stuff,
Rory

Hey,

A few quick notes. I don't want to thoroughly critique this because we're still obviously only partway through the pilot, but I thought I'd go over a few brief things.

1 - Formatting things. You only put a character's name in caps when you first introduce them. From then on, it's just standard "Pete" and "Caleb". It's also usually pretty standard when introducing a character to give their age and preferably a brief description. This is especially useful for instances such as the scene with Pete's sister; when she is first introduced, I picture her as someone in her late teens. Then it turns out she's young enough to be carted around on Pete's shoulders (which made me think of her as maybe 4-8), but old enough to care about her shoe choices (which I imagine to be around 12-onwards).

Having that kind of immediate specificity of age and approximate description is helpful in that way. (Although I would encourage you to figure out how old Madison is, because I was still sort of thrown by how old she was supposed to be. Many of her actions seemed to jump age-group to age-group.)

I also don't know if you're writing this with a screenwriting software, but I would hugely encourage you to do this. Not just because it gets you in the hang of writing like that, but also because I personally hate reading tv and filmic scripts that aren't properly formatted, and I know I'm not the only one. I would suggest you pick up a copy of FinalDraft (there are, ahem, many floating around the internet) -- or, if you feel uncomfortable about that, get freeware, most of which aren't perfect, but do the trick. (Example: Celtx. I'd suggest attaching your script as a PDF to your post. You've got a lot of the minutiae of formatting down, and I applaud you for that, but the spacing is wrong (which may be because you didn't space it, or it may just be because YWS doesn't process script formatting). I sort of found it distracting to read when all of the dialogue was formatted incorrectly, for example.

2 - Dialogue. You have some strong dialogue and some less-than-strong dialogue. The easiest way to spot these is also a route that you may not want to take, which is to get two or three friends to read the script aloud. It's a weird process, but awkward and cumbersome lines jump out IMMEDIATELY. It's fantastic like that. If you choose not to do that, though, it may also just help for you to read their lines aloud. I found many of Pete's lines to be awkwardly phrased and a bit stilted, such as:

No, you are coming with me to partake in the ever so delightful event of posing while our mom's take pictures and smiling until our faces fall off. 

Read it out loud, or get someone else to read it out loud. It's a bit of a mouthful, and doesn't sound like regular teenager-speak, or regular people-speak, for that matter.

Another line:

Well my dad did manage to make six phone calls, two of them during my speech. Call guiness, we've got one for the books! 

This is better, but it still trips on the tongue. Remember that people aren't so long-winded in real life, especially when you've characterized Pete specifically not to be like that. This is way too clunky and way too long. Pare it down.

3 - Pacing. One of the most crucial aspects of a screenplay. If it's awkwardly timed, the whole thing may fall apart. This is a tricky one to critique when you haven't even posted the entirety of your pilot, but the pacing already feels wonky to me. You have three jumps through time, which is difficult enough to pull off, but the pacing of each time-skip is incredibly different. There's way too much build-up in the second time-skip (with the graduation, picking a shirt at home, in the truck, at the party) in stark comparison to the other time leaps. Be very mindful of this as you continue to write or edit your pilot, because it already feels deeply off to me.

4 - Beats. Another crucial aspect of screenwriting: the emotional shifts in the story. One of the most troubling ones to me is the shift where Harry goes crazy. I know the entire point of it is for it to be unexpected, but there needs to be a visible shift on-screen, where he goes from loving husband to crazed would-be murderer. Again, just a moment where his face changes or he turns the knife in his hands, something to give us an indication of what's to come so that the following events don't feel so ridiculously out-of-the-blue that they alienate us as an audience.

5 - You specify certain things in the script that the viewer won't possibly be able to know. Things like: the fact that Pete and Caleb are not related. We only really find this out on-screen when we see Pete and Caleb's different parents at the graduation, but up until then, it seems as if Pete and Caleb are brothers. Some indication, through dialogue possibly, is necessary to clarify that.

Another example of this is:

CALEB is referring to the fact that PETE was just about to advise him to see a doctor. PETE's mouth clamps shut and he reaches into the back seat. 

Again, there's no way the audience will necessarily know what Caleb is referring to, even though you tell us in the script. Especially because Caleb's initial "don't tell me to go to a doctor" is a pretty throwaway comment, and there's no real guarantee that they will remember it. Put it another way: if you feel that you need to explain what he is talking about in text, it's sort of clear that the audience won't make that connection. Even having Pete begin, "Maybe you should--" and having Caleb cut him off would work a little better.

A few final notes before I go: I would recommend you read "Story", by Robert McKee, which is a pretty excellent introduction to screenwriting in general, and is pretty much universally acknowledge to be a definitive guide to screnwriting. (You don't need it to write screenplays, but it makes you really consider a lot of things you may not otherwise. If you have doubts as to his credibility, just take a look at the back of the book, which lists the extensive and impressive collection of screenwriters and creators -- both for tv and film -- who have used his workshops or his book to learn to write for the screen.)

Secondly, an invaluable resource is other writers' screenplays. You can find heaps of these online, on DVDs, and in books, but one of my favourite resources if Daily Script, which is a database of movie and television scripts. Every day a new script is uploaded to that database. Just browse through and read some. They're not only excellent reading material, they're an invaluable source to learn from.

Good luck writing the rest of the pilot. Despite my reservations, I'm still interested to see where you will take this.

I used a screenwriting program and it does all the formating for me, I've used it for a couple years, but when I went to post it on here all of the formatting got messed up so I can't help that I just fixed what I could :/

I'll try to be slighty more specific with the descriptions when I introduce them. It's just not usually good to get way specific the industry being the way it is they want to have some flexibilty to find the right actors for the right roles. And my intention is to use this in an application for a tv writing program so that's why I'm not getting way into their exact appearances and all that, but I'll definately look it over again.

And Madison is 13. Sorry if that confused you, Pete is a big strong guy, as brother and sister they are pretty close so that's why she's on his back.

I know the time jumps are confusing! I promise it makes sense at the end!

I've edited it a lot already but I'll look over those bits of dialogue you talked about and see if I want to make changes. I'm going to post the whole thing when I'm allowed to post again, I haven't been on here for a while so the changes have confused me! Haha. But check back if you wouldn't mind in the next few days to give the whole thing a look through, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Oh and if you like reading about screenplays you should look up Syd Field, I'm reading one of his books. It literally changed my life haha.

Thanks,
Rory