Pre-Production - Script Draft 1 & Feedback

Condemned First Draft

Content

For the first draft of my script, the story starts off with David, the protagonist, standing outside of the prison gates reading the documents that highlight his living arrangements. From here he decides to explore the local area to see what has changed in his absence.

In scene 5, David finally gets a first look at his accommodation. He places the documents on his bed and walks over to the phonebook where he comes across the name of an old friend named Stephen, somebody he knew from before prison. David then decides to look for his daughter, Nicola's phone number, however he is unsure of how to use the phone. He instead writes down Stephens address and leaves.

Using the address he found in the phonebook, David decides to visit Stephen. Stephen is, as expected, surprised to see David and invites him inside to catch up. The pair have a long conversation about life before, during and after prison before Stephen urges David to speak to his daughter. When David arrives home, he calls Nicola but doesn't say a word, hesitating at the sound of her voice.

Again, David and Stephen return to the conversation about life during prison as well as the crime itself, the murder of Davids wife. The pair head into a pub where Stephen further urges David to call Nicola. Again, David arrives home and calls Nicola, only this time Nicola is aware of the call and the pair begin to talk, agreeing to meet the next day.

David, as well as Stephen, meet Nicola at the same pub as before. With the meeting going very well, David heads off to the toilet, leaving Stephen and Nicola to talk. It is in this moment that Stephen reveals to Nicola that it was in fact him that killed her mum, Davids wife. Nicola lashes out at Stephen and storms out of the pub, with David only catching the very last moments of the conflict, missing the big reveal.

Having only caught the very end of the conflict, all David took out of it was the fact that Stephen was a dying man. He decides to visit Stephen but finds him on his death bed. With Stephen assuming that David had found out everything, he sincerely apologises for the murder of his wife. Instead of helping Stephen by calling the doctor, he decides to leave Stephen to die.

Feedback

One of the biggest issues with the script, an issue I had with my last idea, is that there isn't much story happening, just a lot of plot. This was something I needed to revise, the key differences between plot and story.

Another issue is that all of the plot points in the script seemed to just fall in place for David and a lot of it is kind of random. How has David managed to discover the whereabouts of both Stephen and Nicola on his first day out of prison? While this is technically possible, it's not realistic.

Scene 8 in particular is a major issue. While David has been in prison for an exceptionally long time (40 years), he should know how to work an electronic kettle, they're not that recent of an invention. This further shows that the research made in preparation for this script was not very deep. The biggest issue of them all however, is that this scene is WAY too long for what it is. Conversational scenes such as this should not last longer than a page (maybe a page and a half at a push) unless the scene is particularly important both visually and technically. My scene is over 3 pages long and reveals very little in this time, it's more or less just a conversation.

The characters also need more development. This is perhaps something I should investigate before I begin the next draft of the script. I need to understand the characters IN DEPTH before I begin writing.