It's time for my annual (how lazy is that?) 10 Page Torture Test.

Originally I envisioned these would analyze both writing and story elements for the script in question, but I soon realized that takes time and effort.  The first slips through my fingers like grease-dipped ants on rollerskates; the second I always avoid, it being a distasteful yoke we genXers rightly shrugged off at birth.  So no deep analysis of story.  Just a hard slog through writing effective words on the page.

In this installment, Attack the Block by Joe Cornish, or as it was originally titled: Attack the Block, bruv, or I Will Stab You Right and Proper.

I'll spoiler you up front and tell you I think Joe does solid work here.  Not much for me to tweak.  Mainly nitpicky personal preference.  Without blowing my load too early, I'll let you know I LOVED the hoodlum dialogue.  I don't watch Brit TV, just the infrequent Brit low-budget horror film (Severance, The Cottage, etc.)... well that's not true... I love and watch Peepshow... Anyway, what I was saying is, I don't watch a LOT of Brit TV, so here the tone and voice of the thugs really sells it to me.  The language is rich and authentic sounding.  I got to the end of the ten pages and wanted to keep reading.

By the way, Google Presentations effed up the layout when exporting to PDF, so you'll notice some of the red comment lines shifted up by a few pixels, which means some overlap lines above.  I've posted my displeasure to Google, pointing out that a presentation that cannot faithfully produce WYSIWYG is FUBAR in the extreme.

GRAMMAR NOTES:

1. Following the old chestnut of 'Begin as late into the scene as possible and end it as early as you can," unless her retrieving her phone has some significance, why not just intro her mid-phone-chat? An editor might trim it anyway, given that editors and writers follow the same core impulse of trim Trim TRIM, GODDAMMIT!  Plus it means we can lose the '(on phone)' and reclaim a line on the page.

2. "She walks, passing a police sign..." -- 'walks' is redundant here, unless the speed of her movement is significant.

3. 'moves' is a weak word. It gets the job done, but why not punch it up and suggest HOW she's moving, which in turn can indicate her state of mind.

PAGE NOTES:

Sense of menace right from the get-go.  Nice.  The tone is right there and we know what we're in for.  I'm picking up some not-so-great Basil Exposition phone chatter, but let's roll with it for now.

GRAMMAR NOTES:

8. "About thirty meters ahead..." -- You're the author. Be decisive and specific.  Just say "Thirty meters ahead..."

8A. "... we see SIX HOODED YOUTHS."  I'm not a stickler for avoiding "we see" in a script.  Used frugally, it's fine.  But here, it feels like we're almost getting a POV shot.  This is SAM spotting the group of thugs for the first time.  Let's stay with her, stay in her viewpoint.  What's different?  By saying "she spots SIX HOODED YOUTHS" we get a double whammy: in our mind's eye we flit from her face registering the threat to the threat itself.  With "we see" we're cutting her out of the moment and inserting ourselves, the Reader.  It's a minor thing, but as you write you want to stay inside the viewpoint of your characters as much as possible.  That way you can always be filtering the narrative through their perception and reactions, drawing the reader closer and hopefully bonding them to the characters and the experience. Either that... OR I've had too much Yoosh lychee-and-aloe-vera juice today. I expect it's what they drink in Heaven when the beer runs dry.

9. The essence of this sentence is: the two kids are among them.  The author wants to remind us who the 'two kids' are, in case we've forgotten. But I think the Reader's got a handle on it -- we brushed up against those two freaky kids just a page ago.  Twice, in fact.  So I would simplify the sentence and trust that the Reader gets it.  It only saves three words, but you trim where you can and always try to say what you need to say in the fewest, clearest words.

10.  "Sam's pace SLOWS."  If the author wants to suggest a shot of her feet, then it stays.  Otherwise just say "Sam SLOWS."  Same thing.  "She walks into the road, making for the other pavement" felt like a wordy way of saying "She crosses the street for the other pavement."

11. "Ahead, the gang watch" or rather, should be "the gang watches" -- how many gangs are we talking about? One? So singular. Anyway: "The gang watches, exchanging unheard comments, conferring."  'Conferring' alone suggests quiet, conspiratorial dialogue, so I have no hesitation trimming there.  I added 'ominously' to push us back into Sam's viewpoint.  That would be her evaluation, evidenced by her clutching her handbag closer in response.

12. This is a simple case of run-on sentence. No biggie.

13. My personal taste here, but those two paragraphs feel like they need to run together, packing all the punch into one fluid development.  Action (they block her), reaction (she STOPS.)

14. This was a case of contradiction.  "Nobody says anything. The silhouetted HOODS exchange whispers."  Well, which is it?  If it's both then at least give us a BEAT between them.

14A. "The tallest YOUTH walks toward her."  'Walks' simply will not do here.  The author has been steadily ratcheting the tension.  But not here, where the verb fails to do anything on the page.  Hence the punch-up to 'stalks'.

15. Same thing here.  "She turns around."  Blandsville.  Tinge it with urgency via 'spins' or 'whirls' or 'wheels' or something.

16.  'lazily' -- repetition.  A couple paragraphs up, the two boys were 'lazily' pedaling toward her.  No crime using the same descriptive words on the same page, but why not add something new to the mix instead?

17.  "Only his EYES are visible between hood and bandana, like some ghoulish highway robber."  That's a nice turn of sentence!  I flagged this as an example of passive construction that works well, thanks to the highway-robber imagery.


PAGE NOTES:

Still no surprises.  Everything's leading to the inevitable confrontation.  We're starting to get a feel for these street hoodlums.  So far, Sam is just your average girl in distress.  The twitchy hoodlums I'm warming to, though.

GRAMMAR NOTES:

20.  'falls' feels too soft here, IMO.  The thug just shoved her.  Let's keep it feeling sudden and violent.  To really beef it up you could use "She SLAMS to the ground. HARD."  Visually, this would support the woozy, concussed POV from her that follows.

21. Trim trim trim.  "... as the gang closes in around her" can be shortened to "as the gang closes in".  Same here with "Sam sees something that makes her FREEZE."  Things are happening fast in this bit.  Don't slow it down with superfluous words.

21A. I didn't mark this one on the page, but "As one, they turn and look upwards" can shrink to "As one, they turn and look up"  or even "As one, they look up."  It's a tiny change, but if you trim incessantly everywhere it has a cumulative effect on how your whole script reads.  Things like 'he turns' can often be omitted because it's implied in the action.  Be careful not to bog down your writing with minutia.

22.  "Whatever it is, it impacts the roof..."  The author already told us what it is: a fireball, initially though to be a firework.  No time to stop for analysis right now.  Keep the pace ripping along in this sequence.  And the second problem I saw here was: "it IMPACTS the roof of the nearest parked car..."  That is one clinical, detached way of saying "the fireball PUNCHES through the roof of the nearest parked car..."  Which phrasing gives you a more vivid image in your mind?  Try not to let the air out of action scenes by choosing weak verbs.

23. Same here.  At the climax of the action, don't let a passively arranged sentence dampen the action.  Here, Joe gives us the EFFECT before the CAUSE. "The gang are thrown..."  Switch it around and give us the full power of Subject-Verb-Object: "The SHOCKWAVE HURLS the gang against the tarmac."  Or maybe PUNCHES them against the tarmac.


PAGE NOTES:

We get our first big payoff scene with the FIREBALL SKEWERING the parked car.  THINGS HAVE CHANGED IRREVOCABLY.  The 'gap' between what the characters expected would happen (both the gang and Sam) and what IS happening has just widened from the size of a crack to the size of a ravine... and we already know, pretty soon it's going to widen further to, oh, let's say THE SIZE OF THE GRAND CANYON. :-)

We are five pages into our opening 10 pages, and this thing is building wonderfully.  It's a well-worn path we're traveling, but it feels like we've got a confident hand guiding us.

GRAMMAR NOTES:

Mainly trimming on this page.  "Before he can finish, the something JUMPS OUT AT HIM."  I would go further and trim even more... "Before he can finish, the something LEAPS AT HIM."  Then: "It wraps itself around Moses, who falls backward."  A little punching up gives: "It wraps itself around Moses, who TUMBLES backward."  I've never encountered the verb 'lollops'. I love it!  Suggests a kind of loping, bouncing run.  I scrubbed YOUTH 4's use of 'thing' because YOUTH 3 used it in the line before, and the repetition sounded jarring to me.

28. "MOSES climbs to his feet."  Yes, I'm a needle scratching over the same groove.  "MOSES rises."  "MOSES stands."  "MOSES gets up."  All of these mean the same thing and get it done with less words.  BUT... we're slowing down for a moment, recovering and regrouping after the burst of action, so I have no real objection to a little padding at this point.


PAGE NOTES:

"Looked like Dobby the House Elf..."  LOL. Now we get a taste of the promised humor.  Our expectations shift: this is going to be a chop-n-chuckle SF/action flick.  Will it be on par with Shaun O' the Dead?  Read on...

GRAMMAR NOTES:

Well.  This is embarrassing.  All I could manage was correcting some pluralism.  Great to see Joe firing on all cylinders as we head towards page ten.

PAGE NOTES:

They killed it.  Now we know these guys will be around for the duration.  Good.  I'm starting to sense these wayward lads can become productive members of society, if... if only they were faced with some kind of... hmm... some kind of life or death event forcing them to become men...

Of course, the ironic part is, they set in motion this life-and-death event.  It's the Zen philosophy of: "When you are ready, the challenge will appear."  Or was it: "When you are ready to learn, the teacher will appear."  What I'm saying is, they've triggered their own rite of passage because the time was ripe.  That kind of thing.

Did you read any more of it?

Well just from reading the first 10 pages here, the film is exactly as written.  So you know, might not be many changes.