TPG Week 163: Actions Alone Do Not A Story Make

[Steven Forbes]

Hello, one and all, and welcome back to The Proving Grounds! This week, we have a new Brave One in Ezra Dixon. We have Sam LeBas in the lovely purple, I'm in the damning red, ad we'll see what happens when Ezra goes

Into the Abyss

By Ezra Dixon

Page 1:(It’s just a personal preference, but I like a panel count at the top of each page.)

Hey, folks. Remember last week when I stated that I was tired of seeing scripts in 10 pitch? Well, this one isn't much better, as it's in 11. Yes, I bumped it up to 12. Here's what happens: you send this script in to an editor, unsolicited. They get tons of unsolicited material, so they have to weed through the pile in some way, and one of those things are whether or not the script is easy to read. That means if they open the script and see that it's in a 10 or 11 pitch, they can then decide whether or not they want to read the thing. More than likely, it'll be deleted, and you won't get a response on it. Your default is 12. I highly suggest you use it.

Panel 1: (full page/splash)

This is a landscape view of a small family grave-plot at night. It is raining, with clouds and a treeline in the background. The moon is peeking through the clouds but mostly obscured. Maybe the moon has the subtle illusion of looking like a skull? (Uh huh... If the moon is mostly obscured, why go through the trouble of asking to to look like a skull?)

In the midground, there is the small family grave-plot (You said this already.). It is surrounded by a waist-high wrought iron fence that has a few bent or missing posts. The area has tall knee length grass, and there is a gnarled dead tree bent over the right side of the plot. The 3 graves have slight wear with moss growing on some, and have Victorian era designs (Victorian era designs? What does that even mean?). One of the graves has a hole dug in front of it, along with a pile of dirt , a shovel stuck in the dirt, and a simple hand lantern on the ground next to the headstone. The lanterns light creates dramatic shadows from the fence, graves, dirtpile, shovel and tree.

In the bottom left foreground, there is a parked Wolsely Stellite 1910s era auto. Its front end facing right.

(You have written a novella, and yet, I have so many questions. Is this in a rural or urban area? Are these graves marked with headstones? Wooden crosses? How many graves are there? (Three.) A plot is usually a designated area within a larger cemetery, but it seems like this may be something more like a private cemetery on family land, which do you intend? It seems that something like a private cemetery [specifically the ones that can be found on plantations or large estates] would offer the privacy that this anonymous character needs, but I guess people rob graves in cities, too.)



Unseen Speaker: (coming from inside hole by grave) (Let’s name this guy if he’s going to be a main character later.)

“There you are!” (More study is needed, right here. You don't need to have quotation marks around dialogue. We'll go into why a little later.)

Click here to read more.

[SamRoads]

Hi

I think that discernable is fine, it's another spelling of discernible. Just as moustache is a spelling of mustache.

I think the best way of showing that the door he barges into is easier to open than expected is with two panels. In the first, the old man is winding up for a shoulder charge, face screwed up with intention. In the second, he's sprawling through the doorway, off balance.

However, all of the above doesn't excuse the missing apostrophes from the script. You can't expect anyone to take you seriously as a writer if you don't know simple, basic, easy grammar.

Steven - 10 minutes practise a day, every day, is the thing that will make you into the next Courtney Pine. And if you can't afford regular lessons with a teacher, try and get just one lesson - you'll learn an absolute tonne. (My degree is in music )

[T_F_Mann]

This seemed really telegraphed. You could tell before we even got to it that the old man was going to be wearing a bowler hat. He sounds like Dum Dum Duggan in a suit. Every beat could be seen coming a mile away. The location could've been better established by having an actual name on the tombstone. Or have the Old Man call the corpse by name then have that name match the name on the uniform of one of the men in the picture with the Old Man in Egypt. I get that you were trying to make that connection by having both someone in the pic have the same mutton chops as the corpse, but doing it that way seemed a bit more vague. Give the reader as much info as possible to draw us in. Knock out your who, what, when, where, and why as quickly as possible so you can draw us in and then don't let go.