Script Feedback | Development

After handing in the first draft of my script, I received some feedback from Steve Coombes.

Steve said that there was a good visual sense in the opening scenes, but the flashbacks take away the story. There's too much 'saying' and not enough 'showing' in the second half. To improve this I need to add a few more reasons as to why Clare and Steven are going to the woods in the first place.
There is a lot of nicely described action at the start, but not enough at the end, so I need to add a bit more effective verbs in the action in the last few pages. I need to take out the explanations, especially what happens in the flashbacks, and the conversation will become more natural.

He suggested that I add a new scene at the beginning of the short film at set it in a school so you can tell that both characters go to the same school and already know each other before they meet in the woods. Steve also said that I should re-arrange my scenes, so there are less flashbacks. I made the original flashback scenes into present day scenes and made sure they were at the beginning of the script. I also changed some of the dialogue to make it more natural, and to make it less say more show. Clare's brother, Billy, is seen in one of the scenes rather than just being mentioned, and this is the same for characters such as Brad, Rob and Lisa who is originally known as 'the girl who shall not be named'.

By moving some of the scenes and also changing some of the dialogue, it had made my script sound better and it has helped the story flow better. I am very happy with the final draft of my script, and the feedback from Steve was very useful.