
NOTES
[I see I missed another misspelling of JULIE top of this page. Suggests M84's not using Movie Magic or Final Draft, where character name typos rarely slip through.]
51."Guides" is okay but, again, lacks conviction. Rob's sole mission at this moment is to get his sister to safety -- and fast. There'll be no gentle guiding. "Yanks" connotes the same unrelenting grasp without stating "Rob doesn't let go of Julie." Other strong verbs I considered: "tows", "hauls", "drags". I figured "drag" to be a tad excessive, even in this situation.
52.Didn't want to repeat "Loner" is all.
53.LOL, this sentence is a clattering trainwreck -- but still delightful! Because you feel the writer going flat out, exhausted and energized, trying to keep pace with the story spewing from their creative wellspring. This kind of first draft writing makes me smile. When a writer is in this enviable fugue state all is forgiven so long as they funnel that stream of images onto the page. Capture first, clean later.
So, the first problem with the sentence is "them" and "they." We must carefully manage reader focus during these fast action scenes. That means careful placement of pronouns. Use them only after establishing the nouns they replace.
In this instance, the pronouns stand for Rob and Julie, but it's not clear, because we didn't re-establish that we're back with those two.
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DANCE FLOOR
Near the exit, Rob and Julie get swept up in a wave of fleeing clubbers. Rob takes a last hard look at Cabo's table, considers Julie, and decides. His hand at her back:
ROB: Come on, let's go!
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END OF PAGE 15.And we'll quit there.
Overall? I like this story. Not a lot happened, but I like what's there. It feels like this could go places.
Problems? Plenty.
Top of the list is structure. Hook is the invitation to the party. [CORRECTION! The hook is the descent into NY streets and the attack on the street kids. But it made so little impression on me -- with its unremarkable, detached antagonist POV -- that I forgot all about it!] Perhaps moving the supermoto biker intro to the front serves as a better hook.
Inciting incident is the attempted murder of Cabo. All of this should fit into 12 pages-ish, ahead of a 1st Act turning point around p.24. I can tell you the inciting incident ends on p.17. That's far too indulgent. In the next draft the writer should savagely trim these opening pages to reduce page count. Brutal, but necessary.
Grammar, punctuation, typos -- standard problems afflicting early drafts. A persistent disregard for the fundamentals marks any rookie screenwriter as someone who's arrogant, oblivious, or NFG (no fucks given). If you're the first, your name better be Tarantino. For the others, commit to improving your craft. Keep three browser tabs open: dictionary.com, thesaurus.com, and google.com for researching grammar rules you don't understand.
And we're done here!
Thanks for reading. Thanks to M84 for the pages.
Coming soon: a different kind of 10PTT starring two drafts of the same iconic movie.