Cigarette Thieves aka The Cigarette Thief - 10 page short script by Edward Washington

[elmorebrown]

Hi Community,

I'm new... but a student and aspiring screenwriter.

Finished, least feel close to being totally done with my first actual screenplay... a short, entitled: "CIGARETTE THIEVES" aka "THE CIGARETTE THIEF".

https://docs.google.com/open?id=1XuOmfWxx7pJla2M1Q6TkMALjaPmsSGTh0JCeqOcxnaf8cH62JSbK1MDHmBQY

It's just 10 pages...and that's down from nearly 70 originally.

I feel good about the conciseness vs. the other drafts, which I consider "had too much" to be effective.

Please enlighten my holiday and provide me some honest feedback, I'll appreciate ANYTHING.

Respectfully,

Thanks in advance,

Edward Washington

 

[King-Anubis]

Hello,

From one writer to another, it's looking very good! There are a few things I picked up on, but don't take my word as gospel - I 'specialise' in non-fiction rather then fiction, so I'm not that experienced in writing screenplays.

Firstly I feel as if your action should be more directed, as sometimes it was a little hard to follow what was going on. Keep it in the active tense and dictate exactly what's going on. Also although for most of the work it's clear who is being referenced, it doesn't mean you can skip out on using personal pronouns such as 'he' or 'his'. Without them it sounds a little disjointed and the action can seem rather eratic. Finally try and make your characters present your remarks. For instance rather then saying "Ahhhhh Fuck. He bolts up." say something along the lines of "Shocked, Elmore bolts up".

At times you also seemed to place dialogue within the action. Although it's not spoken out loud, I still believe you have to treat things like the Skype chat as dialogue, and use a parenthetical remark such as "(on Skype)" to indicate their origin. I'm not certain on this, however, so I'd wait for someone who knows how to structure screenplays better then me to comment.

To give an example of what I mean by the above, I would rewrite the following passage: (Formatting doesn't work, so you'll have to imagine that!)

He closes the chat window. Thank God that's over. Like on a coil from hell, it re-opens.

DaddyE: OK. Good. CLU.

Click. Collapses the window.

ELMORE
Good, you idiot.

Drags long and hard on his cigarette. Then --
Works the textbook. Clumsy fingers hammering keys. Hunt
and peck. Words stitching the screen. As we --

as:

Elmore closes the Skype window with a sigh of relief.
However, like its on a coil from hell, Skype re-opens.

DADDYE
(on Skype)
OK. Good. CLU.

Elmore closes the window.

ELMORE
(to himself)
Good, you idiot.

Elmore takes a long and hard drag on his cigarette
before begining to work hi textbook once more. His
fingers are hammering on the computer keyboard.
Words are filling the screen.

I would personally spice the latter up with a few more adjectives, but you get the point. If it's long, it's long. Don't cut down work for the sake of it - if it has to be 70 pages then make it 70 pages! Either way keep at it as it is certainly an interesting story - don't worry about the number of rewrites as I used to do. I frequently rewrite my work ten or twenty times until I'm happy these days! xD

As a side note, what software do you use? Try Scrivener if you haven't already, it's a godsend to writers