10PTT: Oblivion by Pitchpatch

[Pitchpatch]

Wow.  This one's been percolating forever.  My first real screenplay, way way back in the day.  I wrote 150 pages and realized I was only halfway through the story.  Whoopsie on the outlining.  I'll get back to this one day.  I'd like to shoot it B&W.  Grungy.

Here's page one.  Mainly trimming and activating sentences.  As usual with these 10PTTs, this is a demo edit: I'm not touching dialogue, just tidying up a little to demonstrate the things I look for when rewriting/editing.  I won't annotate everything because if you've read my other 10PTTs then you'll have a good idea why I change what I change.

[Pitchpatch]

Trimming...

[Pitchpatch]

'Momentarily' used twice in two pages.  No need for that except where the issue of timing is important.

[Pitchpatch]

Trimjob.  And get rid of -ings

[Pitchpatch]

Whoops. Scratched out some dialogue.  Supposed to leave dialogue untouched in these 10PTTs.

[Pitchpatch]

...

[Pitchpatch]

"He makes a series of cryptic hand signals."  Nothing wrong with that, but here's a chance to condense a long sentence without losing meaning. Eight words down to four. "He hand signals cryptically."

[Pitchpatch]

"Pretty" ... slightly, marginally, fractionally, mostly, somewhat, partly, almost -- only qualify an action or observation when the qualification is critical to the meaning.

[Pitchpatch]

Flashback within a TV clip?  Huh? Who's viewpoint are we in for the flashback?  Can only be Ziggy's, perhaps fantasizing while he watches and listens to the news report.  I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote this.  Stick a pin in that for the eventual rewrite.

[Pitchpatch]

Mopped up one more -ing and that's it for this 10PTT.

The problem with that alley opening is, who's the main character?  It's supposed to be Ziggy.  (Jordan is his big brother.) But Ziggy's not in that opening scene.  So by page 10 we still don't know how that opening scene relates to Ziggy.  If we've guessed Ziggy as the main char then we've likely also guessed one or more of those opening-scene characters is closely related to Ziggy, and we expect to have that confirmed very soon.

If I drop Ziggy into that opening scene, as one of the watchmen, then it gives away he survives the next six months.  That could suck some uncertainty from the conflict to come.

So there's some re-engineering to do yet on that opening scene.  But overall there's a good deal of conflict going on in those 10 pages.  Lots of dramatic questions raised.

One more project sitting in my drawer.  How about you folks?  Got an old project you'd like to offer up for a 10PTT?

[Jawbreaker]

That's your first script?  Not bad.  Not too bad at all.  And I'll send along a script for you to dissect or whatever.  A western.  I think people will get a kick out it.