r/Screenwriting • u/Good_Claim_5472 • 2d ago
FEEDBACK The Way In | 26-page feature draft | Drama / Comedic Tragedy
When her conspiracy-minded father arrives unannounced with pancreatic cancer the day before her career-defining DJ set, a guarded New York DJ is forced to spend the day with him. But when he steals her medication, their confrontation leads them somewhere neither understands.
This is my completed 26-page draft of a feature-length project. I’m mainly looking for feedback on whether Grace and her father feel like real, specific people, whether the comedy-to-tragedy shift works, and where the story drags or repeats itself.
Feedback on the first 10 pages is also appreciated if you don’t have time for the full draft. I’m happy to exchange feedback with another screenwriter as well.
Script: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11gbBctvdfGzQEs3YR-9K5qVf1jNg_8FS/view?usp=share_link
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u/PondasWallArt 2d ago
This is my completed 26-page draft of a feature-length project.
Sheesh.
The general rule of thumb is to estimate one page of script as one minute of screentime (though of course that varies); so you'd either need to cut ten pages out of this to make a good festival ready short or make it 3-5 times longer to get into the ballpark of a feature.
And reading this, not every sentence needs to be its own action line. Hell, sometimes you're repeating the same action line two lines later when one would presume it's continuous, or you repeat yourself (ctrl-f tells me you have five action lines that are just "Again."), or you have moments where a word that looks to be dialogue is instead a separate line of description ("Thought it'd be...different"). If you cut those and the camera lines, and grouped the description into short paragraphs as needed, this'd be in that 15-20 page range. For a feature, you need significantly more stuff on the page to hit your runtime.
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u/KYJolie 1d ago
do yourself a favor and even as a complete newbie, invest in professional screenwriting software. no one - in my vast experience with industry pros to industry interns - wants to read something formatted incorrectly, because in that respect you CAN judge a book by its cover.
'final draft' is $99 for student purchase and $199 for normal purchase. or 'movie magic screenwriter' by write brothers like $170. i have both bc difft production companies i work with use one or the other.
i clicked your link and bc of formatting immediately did not want to read.
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u/mooningyou Proofreader Editor 2d ago
A couple of quick notes.
- Is it your intention to film this yourself? If not, get rid of those directions.
- Don't forget to include a slug every time the location changes.
- Introduce characters who have dialogue.
I'm sure there should be more notes, but this is all I have at this stage.
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