scojo states the facts about his screenplay

[Thread Zero]

Well 2 people like it mrcomicus.

Mark and fraston!!!

Ha ha.

So you are in a minority of one!

Better luck next time.

Anyway you should have posted the whole thing.
Not the last page or so.

As for the dialogue, is is a monologue.
By one person.
Not many.
And the ending is IRONIC!

And it needs no rewrites Fraston. It is fine as it is.

scojo

By the way mrcomicus and this is a serious question, how did you post it here?
I don't mind, i just want to know how you did it!

[pauljholden]

I cut and pasted it from my email to the message box.

As far as being in a minority of 1. Well, you'll find Milo wasn't too impressed (although he hasn't stated this publicly) and I'm pretty sure you'll get more reactions in the negative soon enough...

Also, it was a future shock script, NOT a screenplay.

[Jim_Campbell]

> As for the dialogue, is is a monologue.
> By one person.
> Not many.

Are we talking about the 'Aliens' Future Shock script?

Y'see ... dialogue is also used to describe the writing of what people say, whether to themselves or to others, and yours needs work, mate.

Try reading the words aloud and imagine someone actually _saying_ them ... if a line sounds daft or unnatural then it will almost certainly come across that way on the page, too.

Good dialogue is the key to conveying your characters' personalities. Get the audience to emapthize with your characters and you've won half the battle.

The other half being a good plot, which you also don't have. Several pages of fighting does not a story make, unless you've reached a point where the reader cares who lives or dies. Since you've made no effort to make us care about the character, what's the point?

> And the ending is IRONIC!

It is? As has been explained to you, the ending comes so entirely out of the blue as to be meaningless. If the alien queen had left a note saying she'd gone to some charity work feeding starving humans, _then_ there would be a point - a nice inversion turning the humans into the evil bastards in the readers' eyes. _That_ would be ironic.

> And it needs no rewrites Fraston. It is fine as it is.

No, it's not. If you want an example of how a Future Shock should be written, look no further than Si Spurrier's 'Given to Fly' (Prog 1257).

There, we have character motivation (jealousy, desire), some sympathy for the human main character (his dad's a bastard) even though his actions are morally dubious and not one but two (count 'em) _two_ plot twists that make perfect sense _within_ the story's established logical confines. And a satisfactory revenge motif rounding the whole package off.

Everybody has to re-write. Even John Wagner has to re-write (as I recall, it took a mighty effort by Andy Diggle to persuade John Wagner not to completely junk all previous Strontium Dog history in the new version).

Re-writing is not an admission of failure, it's an acknowledgement that something can always be _better_ ...

Cheers

Jim